Bulgaria’s wheat plantings at 1.08 million ha, on par with 2016

Bulgaria’s wheat crop has now been planted on 1.892 million hectares, as of December 7, putting it only marginally behind the 1.89 million ha established as the same period in 2016.

The 2016 crop ultimately stretched to 1.98 million ha, producing some 5.7 million mt of wheat.

Plantings for barley and rapeseed are lagging last year, however, with barley 17% behind and rapeseed 7.6% behind, with both collectively currently planted on 280,000 ha, down from 310,000 ha at this stage of 2016.

The corn harvest, meanwhile, has effectively ground to a halt as progress climbed one percentage point to 95.5% complete and with 2.3 million mt produced from 399,000 ha.

Exports of corn are almost double that of the previous year, however, with 291,964 mt moving out between September 4 and December 12, a 95% increase on the 149,528 mt exported across the same period of 2016.

Regional demand and biofuels have kept corn moving out of the country despite stiff competition from other exporters.

“Our corn market is small… it is kept by local starchers, ethanol companies and demand from Greece,” one source said, with the Greek exports cross-border truck deliveries.