Experts of the "August" company state: it is still difficult to predict the volume of the future buckwheat harvest, but the sown areas for this crop are expanding. In the main cultivation regions - the Altai Territory and the Republic of Bashkortostan - buckwheat in 2021 is sown in excess of the planned, since due to heat and moisture deficit, it is replaced by less drought-resistant crops. At the same time, high temperatures and lack of precipitation can damage the buckwheat itself, creating favorable conditions for the reproduction of aphids.
Until the end of summer, Russia has a ban on the export of buckwheat. Restrictions associated with its implementation are not uncommon in the country: the price and the very presence of this product on store shelves are an indicator of food safety for a wide range of consumers. However, due to the fact that 80% of the crop is grown on the territory of only two regions, in the event of a crop failure, there is almost nothing to replenish it with, as a result, the price of buckwheat itself is not stable.
According to Sergey Kapustin, head of the August representative office in Barnaul, the birthplace of culture is India and South China, this is a thermophilic plant, for which the climate of the foothills is most favorable in Russia - with a small intraday range of temperature fluctuations, without cold nights and (preferably) with precipitation in the second half of summer.
The predominant part of buckwheat grown in Russia is consumed within the country, at the same time, exports are also quite developed: the main import countries are China, South Korea, and Japan. Here they prefer to eat buckwheat in the form of sprouts and microgreens, which, however, is now spreading in Russia. Thus, up to a quarter of the Altai harvest can be exported. Buckwheat also plays an important role in nutritional therapy - buckwheat flour is made from it for patients with diabetes.
The cultivated areas of buckwheat in the Altai Territory and Bashkortostan, as a rule, in aggregate exceed 1 million hectares. Experts note that due to the high likelihood of trade and price restrictions, farmers sometimes doubt the payback and reduce its cultivation. However, along with this trend, there are factors that contribute to the increase in acreage.
“The advantages of buckwheat are its relative drought resistance and a short growing season. If the water has left the soil, and the farmers did not have time to enter the sowing area with the planned crops, they often cancel the sowing and replace them with buckwheat. Thus, the areas under it are increasing, - says Sergey Kapustin. “This is exactly what happened in 2021 amid drought. At the end of the first decade of June, the sowing of this crop was still ongoing. In conditions of a serious moisture deficit, buckwheat does not develop, but it does not die either. The determining factor for its yield will be the presence of precipitation in the second half of the summer ”.
Also, the expert points out, buckwheat is often sown on virgin or fallow lands - this significantly speeds up their introduction into crop rotation. An agronomic procedure such as removing weeds, mechanical or chemical, usually takes a long time, and it is too late to sow most crops after it has been carried out. But buckwheat, sown even in June, allows you to get the first harvest.
During the growth period, buckwheat can suffer from downy mildew, and in addition, aphids threaten its crops. Moreover, the hotter the summer, the more dangerous it is for the culture, since wet weather stimulates the development of bacterioses and mycoses of the tissues of the insect pest, and its number decreases under such conditions. Farmers, as a rule, do not use insecticides on buckwheat, since they can affect, among other things, pollinating insects.
Buckwheat also has almost no resistance to weed growth, so they can seriously compete for moisture and nutrients in the soil. The main group that harms buckwheat crops is millet-like weeds, which anti-cereal herbicides help to cope with: in particular, Miura, KE, as well as the soil pre-emergence herbicide Simba, which protects buckwheat from the earliest stages of its growth.