The mid-way harvest status

The harvest of winter crops – wheat, winter barley and rapeseed is now complete.
The weather has been acceptable throughout the harvest cycle, so that the winter crops were harvested with water percentages so they could go straight into storage, or ready for sale directly from the combine. The harvest has progressed very well. This year we have increased harvesting capacity with a combine and grain cart at Oravita, and we have now covered the collection sites for crops, so the inward transport can take place faultlessly and securely in relation to crop quality. So the overall picture is therefore that all the winter crops have been harvested successfully and of a good quality, which of course saves costs and increases the value.
However, the yields are not impressive:

Wheat was harvested with an average yield of 4 tons per HA. It’s hard to see a pattern of what is good and bad, but the first-year fields used after a prolonged fallow, as well as the C1 fields are clearly the worst. However, everything has also been against the wheat: -extremely dry autumn, which means very small plants/low germination before winter – very dry spring in the east, virtually the entire period – much rain in the spring in the west – April, May – but not quite enough water during progression and a sudden halt to development, because during grain-filling there were suddenly a few days with very high temperatures, which definitely stopped development -there has been no real winterkill in the wheat.

Barley has yielded 2.9 tons per HA on the 100 HA. This result is obviously influenced by the weather, just like wheat. We have used a malting barley variety and limited N allocation, but it has still not been possible to get it approved as malting barley. Winter barley is to be grown at Oravita in the upcoming season, with optimum fertilizer, etc., without regard to malt production.

Rapeseed: The one 52 HA rapeseed field that survived yielded 2.44 tons per HA. We continue to believe that the decision that only this field should have a survival chance is correct.
The above drought problems are the general picture in Central and Eastern Europe, which has directly caused the prices of crops, already here right after the wheat harvest, to be at levels almost matching the Danish ones. This is very unusual in Romania, because it is usually the buyer’s market at this time. This bodes well for our potential sales prices. We have sold rapeseed at DKK 365 per Hkg and barley at DKK 133 per Hkg, and only a small batch of wheat was contracted before the harvest. Initially we are currently dealing with the sale of 1,800 tons of wheat, which is approved as bread grain.

We have FEADR funded construction projects underway at Mizil and Oravita. Before harvesting of the winter crops, we managed to complete the upgrading of the electricity supply at Mizil and Oravita, and we did concrete work at both sites, and erected barns that cover the sites for inward transport of crops. Likewise, the permanent high-capacity dryer in Mizil is in place and natural gas has been installed on our ground.
Now work starts to establish a new silo at Oravita, as well as new inward and outward transport facilities at both sites. This work must be completed for the start of the corn harvest.

We expect to start the corn harvest at Videle around 25 August and a few days later at Mizil, and the sunflower is expected to be ready for harvest in early September.  The corn is not so advanced at Oravita, so harvest time will be somewhat later here – and thus more “normal”, because at Videle and Mizil we expect a somewhat early harvest due to the aforementioned dry and warm weather.

Although yields did not live up to expectations, because of the weather, we have so far avoided actual mishaps and losses. The above sales meet budget.

August 2012,

Richardt Duus, CEO