OREANDA-NEWS. November 19, 2014. The export potential of Kazakhstan in grain production will reach 7 million tonnes. This was announced by the Minister of Agriculture Asylzhan Mamytbekov at Government Hour in Majilis.

"It is expected that the gross harvest of grain, in weight after completion, will reach 17.6 million tonnes this year, which will allow bringing the export potential to 7 million tonnes," A.Mamytbekov said.

The Minister noted that harvesting is going under difficult weather conditions. Low temperature background and lack of sunny days have led to a long growing season of crops and late maturing of crop. In addition, this autumn was rainy, thus it complicated the harvesting.

According to A.Mamytbekov, grain crops have been removed from an area of 14.5 million hectares, that is 96.5 per cent of cropping area.

Ministry of Agriculture of Kazakhstan proposes Russia to conduct a swap transaction with grain. This was announced by the Minister of Agriculture Asylzhan Mamytbekov at Government Hour in Majilis.

"We could do a swap transaction. For example, Moscow, St. Petersburg markets are approximately equal Kazakh consumer market - we could give our grain to Moscow and take Russian grain near the Black Sea. That is, we could optimize transport charges in this way. We made this proposal to the Russian Agriculture Ministry, it is being considered," A.Mamytbekov said.

According to him, the sale of Kazakh grain to the distant markets is unprofitable because of high transport charges - delivery of grain to the Black Sea ports costs 100 dollars per ton.

The Minister also said that the Russian side made a proposal to create a unified grain holding, it may be beneficial both for Russia and Kazakhstan.

This year, the income of farmers per hectare of arable land is higher than in more favorable years. "This year, home prices are even higher than in the world. This means that we can turn still negatively influencing factor of deeply continental location of our country into positive. Here we must assume that grain markets, which sell grain for export, are located far away for our neighboring countries' grain buyers. It should be noted that some agricultural producers may take yield losses at harvest due to difficult weather conditions this year, which will lead to certain losses in particular cases, and in most cases to lost revenue," A. Mamytbekov said.

The Minister stressed that these losses would be greater in the case of former areas conservation under crops. Lost revenue is compensated by higher prices for products. Price, even for 5th grade wheat, is 30 thousand tenge per ton this year, higher than last year's price of certified wheat. As a result, the income of farmers per hectare of arable land is even higher than in more favorable years.

There is area diversification due to the Ministry Policy - subsidies for grain production are reduced. As a result, areas under crops are declining - they amounted to 12.4 million hectares in 2014, that is 2.4 million hectares less than in 2009. Accordingly, areas under oilseeds and other crops are growing.