Bulgaria nearing wheat harvest end with 6.3 mln t collected

Bulgaria has collected 6.3 million tonnes of wheat and 620,000 tonnes of barley year to date, with the end of harvesting approaching, the agriculture ministry said on Wednesday.

The average yield is around 5.3 tonnes per hectare for wheat and 5 tonnes per hectare for barley, the ministry told SeeNews in an emailed statement.

These quantities are entirely sufficient to guarantee supplies for human consumption, animal feed, industrial processing and crop seeding, and the country is expected to keep its significant wheat export potential, the ministry added.

There were 7.16 million tonnes of wheat collected in the country’s 2020-2021 bumper crop year.

Bulgaria expects to harvest around 6.5 million tonnes of wheat in 2022 and no supply crisis can be expected, caretaker agriculture minister Yavor Gechev said in a statement published on the ministry’s website on Tuesday.

There is currently an excess of grain supply in Bulgaria, Romania and Poland resulting from the ongoing war in Ukraine and the related exports of Ukrainian grain, Gechev said, adding that Bulgaria is mulling various strategies to cope with grain oversupply, which will be discussed with the European Commission. Further measures are also being weighed up regarding phytosanitary control of grain imports, he said.

Bulgaria has exported a provisional amount of 5.2 million tonnes of wheat, the agriculture ministry told SeeNews earlier, noting that between 1.4 million and 1.5 million tonnes are necessary for domestic consumption, with anything above that amount fit for potential export, especially in light of heightened global demand for the commodity.

Tags: barley, wheat, yield, Bulgaria, harvest, export