The long-awaited refreshment has arrived, and farmers from the Middle Banat are carefully following the announcements about precipitation and looking at the sky. In order to be able to prepare the land for autumn sowing, they need a lot of rain, they say. Although the calendar’s optimal dates for sowing oilseed rape are running, producers have hardly even thought about this job until now. In the previous period, they did not even try to enter the fields with land preparation machines for this big job, because the land is dry and hard.
After almost two months of rain in the Middle Banat. And while in some parts of the country there is or is expected to be heavy rainfall, for now in this region the rain has fallen, as the old people would say, only to collect dust. However, the producers hope that there will be enough rainfall in the coming period so that the land can be prepared for sowing. And the first crop that will be found in the country, as a rule, is oilseed rape.
Farmer Sava Karanjac from Konak has been producing rapeseed for the last six years. Every autumn, he sows about 30 hectares with this crop, and he plans to sow as much this year as well.
The deadline for sowing has been moved to the end of September
“When we talk about establishing new rapeseed production, the biggest problem right now is the drought. The soil is very dry and hard, so preparation for sowing in these conditions is impossible. I expect sowing only after a few rains, and not before the end of September”, explains Sava Karanjac, a farmer from Konak.
Although the optimal period for sowing oilseed rape is the end of August and the beginning of September, this work, he says, has been postponed for several years.
“For the last few years, the sowing date has been moved to the end of September due to the dry autumn. Last year we even entered October, so the returns were solid considering the year we had. The advantages of growing this crop are the first money from it, a solid price and avoiding the risk of drought,” he adds.
Representatives of seed companies confirm that producers are still considering whether to sow rapeseed this year.
“Given the weather conditions in the previous period, the producers partially procured seeds for sowing rapeseed. Part of the producers still do not purchase seeds due to fear that they will remain unsown if optimal conditions are not created for land preparation and sowing of this crop”, says Ivica Živanov, promoter of Pionir.
The quantities of seeds that the producers have ordered or already bought for now, he says, are significantly less than last year.
“This does not mean that there will be a drastic decrease in the area under this culture in this part of the Banat, because a few liters of rain would improve the situation and restore interest in the sowing of oilseed rape. In any case, there are producers who have definitely given up on this crop due to this year’s poor yields. The winter moisture deficit, and later the dry and warm period in April, affected the rather poor yield of rapeseed. I think that a slight decrease in the sown areas is to be expected this autumn”, adds Živanov.
He says, in the part of the Middle Banat that includes the municipalities of Žitište, Sečanj and Nova Crnja, oilseed rape is mainly found in the fields where there are plots of the fourth and fifth class and where other crops have a harder time succeeding.
Producers want to see how much rain will fall
And agronomists agree that it is too early to talk about the sowing of rapeseed, because the optimal period for its sowing is running out.
“Our subcontractors have partially procured seeds, but there are also those who are waiting to see if the sowing will be able to be done at all. The biggest problem at the moment is the lack of moisture in the soil. First preparation ie. processing on the plots where the rapeseed will be sown was done immediately after removing the grain. The second preparation, which is carried out immediately before the sowing of rapeseed, cannot be carried out under these conditions”, says Dejan Sekulić, agronomist of the PD “Graničar” estate from Konak.
Producers can now only get seeds and wait to see how much rain will fall, because at the moment they can’t do anything on their plots.
“The way our land looks now, we need at least 50 liters of rain to carry out quality preparation and sowing of rapeseed”, says this agronomist.
Even though we have previously had oilseed rape seeded outside the optimal terms, at this moment, experts say, it is impossible to predict how this year’s later seeding could affect the future yield. Everything depends on when winter will “come” and what it will be like. at what stage of development will the canola plants enter the winter period.
According to the assessment of the Business Association for Industrial Plants, oilseed rape is grown on about 25,000 hectares in Serbia, and there is a possibility that it will occupy about 60,000 hectares. Most often, it is exported as seeds, not as a final product.
In Europe, rapeseed is the main source of vegetable edible oil, and in the world it is the second most important industrial plant. The largest producers are China, India, Canada, Poland, Germany, France and Great Britain.
Source: RTS
Source: energetskiportal.rs
