Russia to increase sugar beet sowing area in 2021

Russian farmers will increase the sugar beet sowing area by 13.6% year on year to 1.05 million hectares in 2021, the agriculture ministry said on last Friday, signalling higher supply for the domestic market next year.

Russian President Vladimir Putin criticised officials and market players over rising prices for sugar, bread, flour and sunflower oil earlier.

Subject to favourable weather conditions, the larger sowing area will help Russia to harvest not less than 40 million tonnes of sugar beet and produce about 6 million tonnes of white sugar from it in 2021, the ministry said in the statement.

Russia harvested 33.5 million tonnes of beet this year due to unfavourable weather which reduced yields. Refineries have already produced 4.3 million tonnes of sugar from this year's crop. Russia also has large stockpile of sugar.

Officials are preparing a list of measures to stabilise food prices. One of the proposals sees them fixing a maximum price for sugar through agreement between retail chains and producers, a source, familiar with discussions, told Reuters.