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Agriculture: Romania's 2018 crops: Cereals at 30-plus ml tonnes, corn and sunflower output at EU top
Romania's cereal crop this year was of over 30 million tonnes, as to 27 million tonnes last year, with corn and sunflower outputs topping EU charts, Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Petre Daea said on Monday.
"This year's cereal crop exceeds 30 million tonnes. At sunflower we have more than 3.35 million tonnes, placing us on the top position in the EU, with the largest production ever. We still have to harvest 0.5 percent of the surface under corn in the central counties, but to date we have already exceeded 18 million tonnes. We are EU's #1 at the corn crop too," Daea said.
The surface under corn this year was of 2.415 million hectares and sunflower was grown on 1.01 million hectares. The Minister of Agriculture said that the final data on this year's crops as well as the yields will be announced in a few days.
This year the wheat harvest exceeded 10.2 million tonnes, more than 2.3 percent higher than the 10 million tonnes registered last year, despite the extreme weather spells that affected Romania in 2018.
The summer grain harvest reached 12.8 million tonnes, up by less than 1 percent compared to the 12.7 million tonnes registered last year, with an average yield of 4,655 kg per hectare; last year's figure was 4,598 kg per hectare.
In 2017 Romania's total cereal production was of nearly 27 million tonnes, or 1.4 tonnes per capita, with record-highs for wheat, peas, barley, sunflower, soybeans, corn, potatoes, grapes and corn. The wheat, rye and triticale output was about 10 million tonnes, with a yield of 4.83 tonnes per hectare, while the corn crop "leaped" to 14.5 million tonnes, with an average of almost 6 tonnes per hectare. Sunflower also saw a record-high output of 3.167 million tonnes in 2017, with a yield of 2.72 tonnes per hectare.