Romania receives over 507 million euros in H1 2020 wheat, meslin export revenues

Romania exported 2.55 million tonnes of wheat and meslin in the first half of 2020 to the countries inside and outside the EU, up by almost 13% on H1 2019, according data with the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MADR) provided at the request of AGERPRES.

The value of wheat and meslin exports, between January 1 and June 30, 2020, advanced 12.8% to 507.63 million euros. In the first half of 2019, 2.258 million tonnes of wheat and meslin were exported worth 450.089 million euros.

According to the trade balance with agri-food products, wheat and meslin ranked second, after maize, in Romania's top deliveries to foreign markets, between January 1 and June 30, 2020, as well as in the same period last year.

Meslin is a two-part wheat, one part rye mixture.

The average wheat production this year was 2.9 tonnes per hectare, down 40% from 2019 due to drought that affected over 900,000 hectares of wheat, out of a total of 1.168 million hectares under the crops last fall.

In 2019, about 9.4 million tonnes of wheat were harvested, and this year the production has reached about 5.5 million tonnes, according to data released by Agriculture Minister Adrian Oros.

Romania's consumption demand is 2.2 million tonnes at the most, to which 550,000 tonnes of wheat for seed is added. At the same time, about 400,000 tonnes of industrial wheat are used in the alcohol industry and 400,000 tonnes of wheat fodder for animal feeding.