Wheat yield in Serbia drops 30% due to drought

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

Malešević explained to BETA News Agency that where precipitation was very low and the yield ranged from 2.5 to 3.5 tons per hectare, while in South Banat and Srem, in the northern prince of Vojvodina, it went up to 8.5 tons, “improving the mean value.”

Due to droughts and delays in the fertilisation routine caused by expensive mineral fertilisers, the technological quality of wheat will drop, the expert 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, despite growing wheat prices, because their costs had multiplied.

Kleut said that only a few farmers whose yield was five tons per hectare could earn slightly more than they had invested – some RSD30,000 per hectare (1€ = 117,5RSD) – and only if they sold their wheat for the unlikely RSD35 per kilogram.

And there are too few farmers falling in this category, he added.

Tags: fertilisers, droughts, yield loss, harvest, Serbia, wheat, precipitation