According to Rosstat, the price for potatoes in Russia has been going up for the second week in a row. At the moment, the selling prices for it are 1,5-2 times higher than at the same time in 2020.
The harvesting campaign is in full swing in the country, prices usually decrease during this period, but this summer was abnormally hot, and now it is raining everywhere. There is a risk of a serious shortage of crops if the rainy weather drags on and frost immediately sets in.
According to the Ministry of Agriculture, a little more than 2 million tons of potatoes have already been harvested. The latest forecasts of the department for the gross collection in the industrial sector - 7,5 million tons. At the moment, a little more than one third of the planned volume has been excavated. In the Tula, Bryansk, Novgorod and Nizhny Novgorod regions, the rate of harvesting is significantly behind the usual indicators. In the Moscow region, according to the results of the last week, the situation is better.
Let us remind you that Russia annually produces about 7-7,5 million tons of potatoes, covering about 86% of the needs of the population. But the last 3-4 years, as the executive director of the Potato Union Alexei Krasilnikov notes, due to low prices for potatoes, its production was almost unprofitable, which led to a reduction in areas by 10 thousand hectares (primarily in personal subsidiary farms and small producers ), with an average yield of 20-25 centners per hectare, thus lost 500 thousand tons.