Krasnodar Territory boosts rice harvest by 23% in 2023

KRASNODAR. Nov 21 (Interfax) - Krasnodar Territory, Russia's largest rice growing region has completed harvesting the crop, bringing in almost 800,000 tonnes, 23% more than last year.

"We harvested almost 800,000 tonnes of rice this year. This is the only farm crop that maintains a good price today, the price for rice is 45 rubles [per kilogram]," the region's agriculture minister, Fyodor Dereka said at the Yugagro agricultural exhibition in Krasnodar.

The dam and sluice installations collapsed at the Fedorovsky water catchment system in April 2022. As a result, Krasnodar Territory reduced its rice crop area by 25%, extended planting until the beginning of June and harvesting until almost the start of winter. As a result, the gross rice harvest fell 23.5% to 650,000 tonnes.

This year the crop area was expanded by 20% to 110,000 hectares thanks to the construction of a temporary dam at the Fedorovsky system.

Dereka said this year was difficult for farmers because of weather conditions. "First there was heat, then precipitation," he said.

"But, nonetheless, we maintain food security, we harvested almost 10 million tonnes of wheat alone," he said, adding that more than 80% of this wheat was third and fourth grade.

The gross corn and sunflower seed harvests totalled 2.2 million tonnes and 1.5 million tonnes, respectively, Dereka said.

Krasnodar Territory, one of Russia's largest farming regions, saw its gross harvest of cereal grains drop 9% to 11.3 million tonnes due to weather conditions, with the wheat harvest shrinking by 10.3% to 9.6 million tonnes.