Russia to 'considerably' cut grain exports amid drought

Seed Daily via AFP: Russia on Thursday admitted that a poor harvest will force the world's third-largest wheat exporter to "considerably" cut its foreign deliveries despite worrying spikes in global food prices.

But Agriculture Minister Nikolai Fyodorov stressed that he firmly opposed a grain export ban like the one imposed two years ago and insisted that some shipments to key clients such as Egypt would still be made.

"Unfortunately, our forecasts are changing literally by the day," Fyodorov told the state's Vesti 24 news channel. "At the moment, the trend is not very good," he added. "Obviously, our exports and other things like reserves will be slightly lower -- considerably lower."

...He called ongoing drought conditions in Russia's southern farming region "abnormal" and tried to calm consumers by noting that two special state reserves held some 23 million tonnes of grain for emergency situations. "This figure does not scare us at all," he said of the 75 million tonne forecast....

A wheat field in Ukraine, shot by Raimond Spekking, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license