A decline in the sunseed production in the Central federal district, particularly in the Voronezh and Belgrade regions, coincided with an increase in output in the Southern and Privolzhsk districts (Table 1).
A marginal decline in the sunseed production in 2004 resulted from a drop in the sown area. In 2004, the area sown to sunseeds decreased by 9 percent to 4.84 million hectares compared with the 2003 record high of 5.32 million hectares.
The decline in sunseed area was partly offset by higher yields.
Russia's average yields reached 1.02 tonne per harvested hectare. It is 2 percent above the previous year's level and the highest outcome since 1995. High output volumes couple with reduced exports because of firm domestic prices, which reflects the dynamic development of the domestic crushing capacities. As a result, Russia's crushing in 2004/05 is seen at around 4.3 million tonnes, compared with 4.1 million last season.
This implies that output of sunoil in 2004/05 may increase to a record high of 1.8 million tonnes, compared with 1.74 million tonnes last season.
In October-December 2004, Russia's total vegetable oil production reached 0.6 million tonnes, including 213,000 tonnes in December.