Sowing Season Completion in May, 2012

June 4, 2012 - PRLog -- As of May 21, 2012, the wheat market was demonstrating a slight excess of supply over demand. According to data from the Farmbook online exchange, between May 1 and May 21 there were registered 174 wheat selling offers vs. 119 wheat buying requests.
The average selling price for wheat has amounted to 7,523 Russian Roubles per tonne, while the average buying price equalled 4,567 Russian Roubles per tonne.
The territorial breakdown of the offers is as follows: 2/3 of the wheat selling offers come from the Central and Southern Federal Districts of the Russian Federation, and 1/3 from Ukraine, Uzbekistan, etc. Thus, the major share of demand belongs to the Central and Southern Federal Districts of the Russian Federation (over 50%); the Ural Federal District of the Russian Federation, Ukraine, Armenia, and Kazakhstan cover 45%; and the Northwestern Federal District of the Russian Federation - 5%.
“During the sowing season, the Farmbook online wheat trading gets more active: we can observe a 150-200% growth as compared to winter months. However, most of the purchasing activities of private farms and agricultural enterprises take place in late winter and early spring. It is accompanied by a rise in the wheat price, which reaches its peak in mid-April and then starts to decline gradually” - commented Bjoerne Drechsler, the founder and author of the Farmbook.info online exchange.
Along with wheat, farmers buy seeds to sow sunflower, cherry plum, and watermelon – yet, that is less than 5% of the total demand. In addition, the market offers seeds of oilseed crops, legumes (including soybeans), barley, buckwheat, vegetables, potatoes, flowers, lawn grasses, etc.
As for sowing equipment, the supply is 20% higher than the market demand, which only proves that agricultural producers have properly prepared for the sowing season and acquired all the necessary equipment beforehand. Currently, the demand is focused only on spare parts for agricultural equipment.
We have a similar situation with fertilizers: the supply is 8% higher than the market demand, which is caused by the completion of the sowing season.