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Russian Grain Crop Falls 34% on Drought, Statistics Service Says
2010-10-18 08:00:01.1 GMT
By Maria Kolesnikova
Oct. 18 (Bloomberg) -- Russia's grain crop declined 34
percent to 59 million metric tons in bunker weight, measured
before drying and cleaning, as of Oct. 1, the Federal State
Statistics Service said.
Farmers also harvested 34 percent less potatoes and 10
percent less vegetables compared with the same period last year
because of the country's worst drought in at least 50 years, the
Moscow-based service said in an e-mailed statement today.
Major farms, which control 75 percent of Russian land under
grains, have another 3.4 million hectares (8.4 million acres) of
plantings to reap before completing the harvest, the service
said. They planted 7.8 million hectares of land with winter
grains, or 26 percent less than at the same date last year,
according to the statement.
Bunker weight is at least 6 percent more than clean weight,
after grain has been cleaned and dried.
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--Editors: Tony Barrett, John Deane
To contact the reporters on this story:
Maria Kolesnikova in Moscow at +7-495-771-7707 or
mkolesnikova@bloomberg.net,
To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Claudia Carpenter at +44-20-7330-7304 or
ccarpenter@bloomberg.net.
