The Soviet Union and China were two communist countries that went in opposite political directions.
The same kind of 180 degree difference is occurring in the two regions’ wheat crops this year, with one progressing and the other stumbling.
“They’re very different situations,” said Canadian Wheat Board foreign crop conditions expert Guy Ash in an interview after the wheat board’s annual summer world crop update.
China is now expected to harvest a wheat crop equal to last year’s 97.5 million tonnes and above the five-year average, while the former Soviet republics are expected to see their wheat crop drop by 15 million tonnes from last year, falling well below the five-year average.
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The main factor is weather, but serious investment in China and chronic underinvestment in the former Soviet Union are also factors.
“China’s in a good situation,” Ash said.
Timely rain this spring helped crops and China’s well-developed irrigation network produced a healthy crop, although wheat acreage has fallen in recent years.
Good weather last autumn and through the winter led to little winterkill. The northern and northeastern wheat crops are being held back now by dryness in Hebei and Inner Mongolia, but overall the crop will be bountiful.
Other Chinese crops are also generally doing well. Corn acreage has increased by 10 million acres in recent years, even though China’s farmland is being gobbled up by industrial and residential development.
The country is expected to produce almost 140 million tonnes of corn, close to last year’s record production.
Corn is a key commodity for China.
“They need a lot of feed because their diet is switching over (to include more meat),” Ash said.
China has been able to keep up its wheat production in the past two years, despite heavy competition for acres, partially because of its variety development, which every year produces four to six new varieties.
Wheat production peaked in 1997 at 123 million tonnes. Production and stocks have fallen in recent years, but the recent rebound demonstrates how investment can shore up wheat production from a generally declining acreage.
As China’s economy develops its agricultural technology, investment and the expertise of its farmers is growing.
The countries that were once part of the Soviet Union are opposite in almost every way.
Weather ravaged the wheat crop this year, reducing its harvest potential. Last autumn’s wet weather and other problems cut about 7.5 million acres from the winter wheat crop. Cold winter weather caused widespread winterkill, although the damage estimates range from a high of 30 percent to more recent estimates of only 10 percent.
However, Ash said the reduced acreage and cold damage will seriously reduce the region’s all-wheat production, even though spring cereals area increased .
“You’re not going to make up your yield by planting spring wheat,” Ash said.
Compounding the weather woes is a creaky and decrepit Soviet-era land ownership and financial system, which prevents most farmers from modernizing equipment or investing in inputs.
“They just don’t have the equipment or machinery to do a lot of things in a hurry,” Ash said.
Much is made of the region’s many-feet thick layer of topsoil, but less is said about the relentless mining of the soil by farmers who can’t afford fertilizer.
“The tractors are old. Seed supplies are poor. They don’t have money for fertility,” Ash said.
“They’ve been mining the soil since the early 1990s.”
The Russian and Kazakh interior haven’t shown much ability this summer to make up for the western region’s problems. Seeding went poorly in Siberia’s spring wheat area, so acreage was limited. Winter wheat in the area is also poor.
“You combine all of that and you lose your 15 million tonnes of grain,” Ash said.
