More than 3.8 million tons of barley will be produced in Iran in the current Iranian year (March 2020-21) to register an 8.57% growth compared with last year, according to an estimate of the director general of Agriculture Ministry’s Grains and Essential Goods Department.
“This volume will meet 67% of domestic demand for the product, up from 63% last year. The remaining 33% need to be imported,” Faramak Aziz Karimi was also quoted as saying by IRNA.
The official added that this year barley has been cultivated on over 700,000 hectares of irrigated and around 1 million hectares of rain-fed land across the country, which together show a 10% increase compared with last year.
Iran imported over 4 million tons of barley worth more than $1 billion during the last Iranian year (March 2019-20), registering a 51% and 68% growth in weight and value respectively when compared with the corresponding period of the year before.
The grain is mainly imported made from Russia, Kazakhstan, the UAE, Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Singapore, the UK, Hong Kong, the Netherlands, Australia and Romania.
Iran was the main buyer of Russian barley in February, UkrAgroConsult reported.
Russian barley exports decreased in February by 49% less than in January and 17% more than in February 2019.
Three million had been exported since the beginning of the season, or 18% less than in the same period in MY 2018-19.
As before, the key importer is Saudi Arabia, which absorbed 38% of exports. In February, the largest volume was exported to Iran.
Since the Customs Service of Russia stopped specifying Iran in its statistics, exports under the "unknown" category have increased significantly, but the bulk of them likely goes to Iran.
Most regular buyers reduced barley exports from Russia this season.
