At the time of this writing, cleaning in some regions of Russia is still ongoing, although the work is already close to completion. According to the Ministry of Agriculture of the Russian Federation as of November 6, 2018, potatoes in agricultural organizations and peasant (farm) farms were dug out from an area of 278,6 thousand hectares, or 91,4% of the planting area (in 2017 - 265,6 thousand .ha). 6,5 million tons were accumulated (in 2017 - 6,2 million tons), with a yield of 233,6 c / ha (in 2017 - 232,9 c / ha).
Based on the information of the Ministry of Agriculture, we can assume that the final result will be close to last year (in 2017, 6,742 million tons of potatoes were harvested in the industrial sector).
It should be noted that harvesting work this year in a number of regions of the Central Federal and North-Western Districts (including Oryol, Lipetsk, partly Voronezh, etc.) was carried out at a slightly reduced pace. The difficulties were largely due to the summer drought: too hard soil reduced the efficiency of the potato harvesting equipment. In addition, machine harvesting under these conditions led to a significant increase in tuber injuries.
Speaking about the features of the season, we can also highlight the fact that difficult weather conditions (lack of moisture during the growing season of potatoes) in many regions led to a decrease in tuberization, but the tubers themselves grew larger than usual. This year, it will be difficult to reproach Russian potato growers for growing small potatoes.
LEADING REGIONS
The composition of the top ten leaders in terms of potato production has remained virtually unchanged for many years. So the 2018 season did not bring any special surprises. The best results in gross yield were traditionally shown by Bryansk (collected by 121,6 thousand tons more than last year), Tula, Nizhny Novgorod, Moscow, Sverdlovsk, Tyumen, Kemerovo, Astrakhan, Lipetsk regions and the Republic of Tatarstan.
Significant growth compared with last year's results was demonstrated by the Novgorod region, Perm Territory (gross harvest almost doubled), the Republic of Udmurtia (25,9 thousand tons more than in 2017).
Yields are high in Bryansk (334,9 kg / ha), Belgorod (326 kg / ha), Orenburg (322 kg / ha), Moscow (297,6 kg / ha), Samara (294,9 kg / ha) Rostov (291,1 t / ha), Oryol (283,9 t / ha), Yaroslavl (280,3 t / ha), Kursk (279,8 t / ha) regions.
Although it can be noted that in many regions of Russia, the yield indicator is lower than last year.
But there are also problem regions. So, in the Primorsky Territory, according to the Ministry of Agriculture of the Russian Federation, at the beginning of November, potatoes were harvested only from 43,3% of the territory (heavy rains took place here in August and September), in the Krasnodar Territory - from 63,8% of the fields. But at the moment there are still chances that the situation will improve.
PRICES
The situation with potato prices in the Russian Federation can be called stable. According to the observations of the Potato Union, since the beginning of the main harvesting stage in the country, there have been no cases of mass sales at dumping prices that could affect the market.
In most "potato" regions, the cost per kilogram of product (wholesale) remains at the level of 8,5 rubles, that is, slightly lower than a year earlier. In some regions, the fall campaigns "in honor of the harvest festival" organized by retail chains have contributed to lower market prices.
We hope that in the near future the trend will change towards improvement, there are prerequisites for this.
In the longer term, we also expect a favorable scenario for agricultural producers. Several factors support this. First, there is no oversupply of potatoes in Russia. Secondly, many European countries have suffered from a severe drought, there is a shortage of all the products that make up the borsch line. As an example, we can point out that since the beginning of October in our country the purchase prices for onions have doubled (from 7 to 15 rubles) - largely due to an increase in export supplies. Against this background, it is logical to assume that most of the crop grown, say, in Belarus, and traditionally supplied to our country, this year will be more in demand on the European market, which will reduce the pressure on ours.
Of course, it will be necessary to control the situation with the importation of early potatoes into Russia, and the Potato Union will deal with this issue, in the autumn we plan to hold meetings with representatives of large trading networks of the country.
But in general, the 2018/19 sales season should be no worse than the past, the results of which, despite the serious difficulties that market participants had to overcome, most of the large operators were satisfied.