On June 18 Bulgaria’s Minister of Agriculture and Food Dimitar Grekov gave the official start of the harvest campaign in Bulgaria during a lull between periods of torrential rainfalls and hail that have been flooding the country recently. Several days later a large part of the crops were flooded. The Consultative Grain Council with the Ministry of Agriculture was summoned due to the unusual situation during the harvest period in Bulgaria this year. It calmed the situation down and rejected the fears about possible grain crisis in 2014.

What do real figures show?

According to Minister Grekov, nearly 36,000 hectares planted with different crops were flooded, most of which planted with grain. However, only 6,000 hectares were completely destroyed by the floods and no crops would be collected from there this year. The rest of the affected land, planted mainly with wheat would not cause problems to the modern combines and all the grain that was beaten down by the heavy rainfalls will be collected, even though the harvesting will be difficult, experts assure.

The wheat yield is likely to be 20% lower as a result of the natural disaster, the Consultative Grain Council announced. Apart from that, the wheat has been growing quite well since the beginning of 2014 and experts were forecasting record-high yields before the floods. Apparently, these estimates would not come true and the quantity of harvested wheat will be slightly lower than the one yielded in 2013 (5 million tons). This volume is more than enough to fill the country’s grain balance and Bulgaria is likely to make good exports of grain in 2014, too. Wheat is among Bulgaria’s most exported agricultural items. This country has a strong presence on the Black sea grain market which includes two of the world’s biggest producers of wheat - Russia and Ukraine. So far, these two countries have not faced any problems with their crops. Experts expect abundant yield in this region, which means that the prices would not increase as wheat supply is expected to be high enough. Only the grain crop in Turkey was partly damaged due to the extremely dry spring there. The situation on the world grain market remains excellent as well.

According to data of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the 2014 crop is likely to be the second best after the historical maximum of 2.5 billion tons reached last year. In terms of the prices of this year’s produce, this is bad news for the Bulgarian farmers, who expect a difficult harvest, a higher prime cost of the grain and lower purchasing prices.

Are we going to witness any increase of the bread price in Bulgaria after the heavy floods?

The experts who took part at the Consultative Grain Council do not expect any price increase, or deteriorated quality of the flour for the time being.

English version: Kostadin Atanasov