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IKAR in Mass Media

Russia - Weather favours beet development on larger area

24 мая 2023 года

Some 1,031,700 ha were sown with sugar beets in Russia as of May 23, up from 1,003,700 ha at the same time last year when sowing had already ended, IKAR's analyst Evgeny Ivanov told Agroinvestor.

Ivanov added that beet sowing has not yet finished. The Ministry of Agriculture has projected 1.04 million ha but IKAR predicts that the area sown could even reach 1.06 million ha.

Sowing has already exceeded the plan in many regions while cold and rainy weather in late April and early May led to delays in a number of regions of the central Black Earth region such as Voronezh, Lipetsk and Kursk as well as Altai, Ivanov said.

He noted that night frosts in the Central Chernobyl region and in the Volga-Urals in late April/early May damaged some of the beet crops and necessitated resowing in some places but IKAR's preliminary assessment is that the overall impact of unfavorable weather on sugar beets is currently insignificant.

According to its preliminary forecasts, Russia will be able to produce 6-6.5 million metric tons of beet sugar in 2023-24, including sugar produced from the processing of syrup and molasses, Ivanov said. IKAR previously estimated Russia's sugar production in 2022-23 at 6.35 million tons - 11.8% more than in 2021-22.

Top producer Prodimex began sowing beets on March 18 and planned to conclude it by the end of May. Its area sown is slightly higher than last year, its director general Viktor Aleksakhin told Agroinvestor. He added that beet sowing began later in a number of districts of the Voronezh region due to waterlogging of the soil, while in other regions sowing took place as planned.

Agrocomplex increased its beet area by about 10% to 46,500 ha, a company official said. Sowing started on March 15.

Progress Agro started beet sowing 3-5 days earlier than usual - from March 23 - since the soil was already warmed up, said its general director Leonid Ragozin. It completed the sowing of sugar beets by April 25. The area under sugar beet this year has slightly expanded to 11,700 ha from 10,200 ha a year ago, he added. The growth became possible due to the acquisition of about 3,300 ha in the Dinskoy district of the Krasnodar Territory and the redistribution of crop rotation of their own lands. He added that the company plans to obtain a sugar beet yield of at least 52.5 tons per ha and the Svoboda sugar factory owned by Progress Agro is to produce over 100,000 tons of granulated sugar.

Ivanov commented that there were local problems in terms of logistics, seeds, spare parts, plant protection products, fertilizers during this year's beet sowing campaign, but in general, the farms coped with them.

Progress Agro and Prodimex did not record any problems with seeds, plant protection products or logistics. The main difficulty, according to the head of Progress Agro, during spring sowing were frequent rains, which forced growers to stop sowing for three to four days before resuming it as the land dried out.

Agrocomplex said it used 95% foreign seeds but is fully equipped with all the resources for seasonal work in the fields: fertilizers, plant protection products, and equipment.

According to Rosstat, Russia's sugar beet harvest amounted to about 48.9 million tons in 2022 - 18.6% more than in 2021.

Source: Platts/Kingsman Daily Sugar News  |  #sugar   |  Comments: 0   Views: 76

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