The 35-day-long US federal government shut down ended but it did mean no USDA numbers in January and eyes are now on the February figures released later today.
As a reminder, the last USDA figures out in December for the 2018-19 crop put Russian wheat at 70MMT, Ukraine wheat at 25MMT and Kazakhstan at 15MMT.
Generally, as we all know, USDA figures are a bit of a guess but we at Green Square do at least get in a car and go and have a look.
Last November we toured several thousand kilometres across Russia and Ukraine to look at the pre-winter condition of the 2019-20 wheat crop.
We do this primarily to assess the ability of the crop to stand a cold winter should there be one, more than to make a credible yield projection, but it does help with our later forecasts when we have followed the crop throughout the entire season.
For the record, in November we pegged the 2019 Russian wheat at 75.0MMT and Ukraine at 25.5MMT.
Unfortunately, we don’t yet tour Kazakhstan, we’d like to if we can raise the funds but there wouldn’t be much point in November anyway as they mainly grow spring wheat.
Email me if you would like to receive copies of our November reports or any of our reports from last season.
The winter so far seems to have been normal, there has been plenty of snow across most of the Black Sea since December, protecting crops from low temperatures, although temperatures haven’t been especially low.
Before the winter we assessed over 90% of Russian and Ukraine wheat to be in good condition, which meant there shouldn’t be any issues with winter kill given the snow cover and reasonable temperatures, the agronomist in me took to the winter break content that crops would be alright.
There are, however, a couple of issues that are worth a mention. First off, back in November, we commented that although the wheat crop was up and away, it was dry and while this winter's snowfall will help replenish soil moisture reserves, spring rains could be crucial in maintaining the current yield potential through to harvest.
Secondly, snow has been absent in the southern Russian grain producing regions of Stavropol and Krasnodar and my contacts there are talking about downgrading their yields if they don’t get some moisture soon. I also have some unsubstantiated reports that there is a similar situation in the very far south of Ukraine.
Not exactly a catastrophe yet but well worth keeping an eye on particularly as Stavropol, Krasnodar and southern Ukraine are near the black seaports where the first new crop wheat originates from.
Further west in Moldova and Romania and the crop there struggled to emerge in dry soils, I was last there in December and although the wheat seeds had germinated, they hadn’t emerged and were sitting dormant in the sub-zero soils. One of my contacts in Romania reported last week that there was no change.
Back at Green Square HQ and we are gearing up for our first tour of the season, scheduled for mid-March when we will travel right across the grain growing regions of Russia and Ukraine and make our first post-winter crop assessment and credible yield forecast. We will be posting pictures on our subscriber’s Twitter account and will follow up with post-tour reports.
Drop me a line if you would like to sign up or would like further details on our full 2019 Black Sea Crop Tour service.
blackseacroptour@gmail.com