Malesevic: Wheat Yield to Drop 30 Percent due to Drought

Wheat (Pixabay)

Serbia’s harvest season is ending in a couple of days, with a 30% yield loss, yet within the 10-year mean value of close to 4.5 tons per hectare, a wheat expert, Miroslav Malesevic, reported on July 4.

Malesevic explained to a BETA reporter that where precipitation was very low the yield ranged from 2.5 to 3.5 tons per hectare, while in South Banat and Srem it went up to 8.5 tons, “improving the mean value.”

Due to drought, and also delays in the fertilization routine caused by expensive mineral fertilizers, the technological quality of wheat will drop, the expert has cautioned.

The expected total yield was between 2.6 and 2.7 million tons.

The president of the Union of Farmers’ Associations of Banat, Dragan Kleut, said that producers were not making any profit this year either, despite growing wheat prices, because their costs had multiplied.

Kleut said that only the few farmers whose yield was five tons per hectare could earn slightly more than they had invested – some RSD30,000 per hectare – and only if they sold their wheat for the unlikely RSD35. And there are too few farmers falling in this category, he added.