A return to work for many this week, nursing hangovers
and that dreaded back to school feeling that even as fully formed adults we can
never quite manage to shrug off, while trying to access emails and websites with
forgotten passwords and “where has the send button gone?” feeling of
frustration.
Meanwhile the sensible people of Russia and Ukraine have
just started their festive party season, writing off January preferring to stay indoors avoiding travelling or any excessive
strain during the coldest part of the year.
To that end the agribusiness news out of the Black Sea
region is fairly scant, mainly consisting of re-hashed stories, pre-Christmas
press releases and an item about a donkey.
The EU officially renewed sanctions against Russia for six
months until July 31, 2017.
Ukraine exported record volume of grains in 2016, up 13% compared
with the previous year while the Ministry of Agriculture raised its grain
export forecast for the current marketing year from 40.2mmt to 41.6mmt due to increased
corn export estimates.
The corn export
forecast was increased from 17.2mmt to 18.5mmt.
Belarus 2016 milk production was an all-time record for the
landlocked country who were able to satisfy domestic requirement and export to Africa,
Singapore, the Philippines, Bulgaria, Serbia, Israel and the US.
Kazakhstan grain production reached 23.7mmt, almost 4.0mmt
more than the previous year which will allow for export levels up to 9.0mmt
while the state set goals of increasing crop production by 30%.
A farm in northern Serbia produces cheese made from donkey
milk that costs €1,000 per kilogram because there are only 100 Balkan donkeys
that can be milked for cheese and each jenny is hand-milked three times a day.
A Russian energy company is negotiating to purchase the farm
for an estimated at €1 million.