Russia’s estimates for this year’s grain harvest, as well as for the winter grain seeded area, include data from Ukrainian territories currently under Russian control, the country’s agriculture ministry said on Tuesday.
The ministry forecasts this year’s grain harvest at 130 million tons, following months of bad weather. This figure represents a 12% decrease from the 148 million tons harvested in 2023 and an 18% reduction from a record 158 million tons in 2022.
A ministry spokesperson told Reuters that both estimates include data from the areas Russia refers to as its “new territories”.
The ministry expects the winter grain seeded area to remain at last year’s level of 19 million hectares, with the area under winter grain in the annexed regions accounting for 1.6 million hectares.
Earlier, the Grain Union industry lobby group alleged that ministry officials were attempting to deliberately inflate numbers by including harvests from territories annexed from Ukraine and referring to bunker weight rather than clean weight.
Russia, the world’s largest wheat exporter, currently controls about 18% of Ukrainian territory, including Crimea, which it annexed in 2014.
According to the ministry’s estimates, in 2023, Russia harvested about 5 million tons of grain, about 4% of the total harvest, including 4 million tons of wheat, from the territory of four Ukrainian regions it partially controls.
This figure puts grain production in Ukrainian territories annexed during the war on par with that of Russia’s Kursk region, the country’s seventh-largest grain-producing region, which experienced some crop losses due to an incursion by Ukrainian troops last August.
In 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine, which it refers to as a “special military operation”, then Agriculture Minister Dmitry Patrushev said the grain harvest was set to grow by 5 million tons a year due to the incorporation of the four regions.
However, the official data for the 2023 harvest, compiled by the state statistics agency, includes data from Crimea but excludes data from the territory annexed during the war.
The Grain Union lobby claimed that the resulting confusion allowed for manipulation of official numbers to conceal losses due to this year’s poor weather, which had hit many Russian grain-producing regions.
Source: Reuters (Reporting by Moscow Newsroom, writing by Gleb Bryanski; editing by David Evans)