Corn producers in Serbia warned today that, due to the drought, the condition of corn is very bad and that it will repeat itself in 2017, when the average yield was around three tons per hectare.
The President of the Association of Farmers “Stig” Nedeljko Savić told Beta that, judging by the undeveloped corn stalk, this year’s yield will be the same as in 2017, when on his farm he had from 1.5 to two tons per hectare, and how much this is somewhat illustrated by the fact that in 2020 the average harvest was 10.5 tons.
“Rainfalls were not uniform in Serbia and somewhere there will be a good corn yield for these conditions, and somewhere not even 300 kilograms per hectare,” said Savić.
He added that the estimated yields will be even lower because, according to forecasts, it will not rain for the next ten days.
“Some producers have started cutting the green mass for silage and say that it is very scarce because there are no grains,” Savić said.
He pointed out that sowing corn per hectare cost him 120,000 dinars and that with this year’s crop it will not be “close to zero, i.e. cover costs”.
Even sunflower, for which the land in Stig is suitable due to significant amounts of potassium, was not without the consequences of the drought and the yield on the Savić estate is around two tons, and in 2020 it was four tons.
The president of the Independent Association of Serbian Farmers, Jovica Jakšić, said that corn in Banat is looking bad and that if the dry period continues, yields will be record low.
“Rain could help the early varieties of corn that managed to pollinate, and the varieties that partially pollinated, or did not pollinate at all, cannot help much,” said Jakšić.
According to him, it rained twice in Banat in the last two months, once it fell five, and the other time 15 liters per square meter, which is negligible.
Corn yields this year, as he said, will be around two tons in the most fertile land, and for the sake of comparison, record yields are from 14 to 16 tons per hectare.
Jovan Negovan, the president of the association of farmers “Pančevački ratari”, said that the corn, whose five or six leaves were dried from the ground, “has finished its career”.
“There are few fields under corn in our area that are promising at the moment, and that means nothing because rainfall is not announced until the end of the month and the corn will deteriorate more and more, and the damage will increase,” said Negovan.