Between climate and market: Southern farmers are not ready to change their crop structure

Experiments by a number of farms to reduce the share of wheat and sunflower by 10% will not significantly change the situation. About 4.8 million hectares are to be sown with winter crops by farmers in the Rostov region, Krasnodar Krai, and Adygea for the 2026 harvest. The volume and structure of the sowing have not undergone significant changes compared to the previous season. Thus, in the Rostov region, out of 2.8 million hectares, 2.4 million hectares are wheat, in the Kuban region, 1.8 million hectares are allocated for winter crops, of which more than 1.6 million hectares are wheat. Market participants are currently more cautious in their forecasts for spring sowing, but significant changes are not expected here either. Cannot escape from monocultures Monocultures, which determine the agrarian economy of the South—wheat and sunflower—have shown a decrease in yield over the past two seasons. Weather anomalies are affecting the quality of the products. This year, for example, ...