Russia has followed Canada in cutting hopes for this year's grains harvest even before spring crops have been sown, after warnings of a squeeze on credit and over the quality of seed.
Viktor Zubkov, the Russian deputy prime minister with responsibility for farming, said the grains crop in what was one of the world's biggest exporting countries until drought struck last year would come in at 84m-85m tonnes.
While an improvement on last year's heat-sapped harvest of 60.9m tonnes, it is lower than the 85m-87m tonnes that Russia had forecast, and below harvests as high as 108m tonnes reached at the end of the last decade.
The announcement follows Tuesday's 400,000-tonne downgrade by Canadian farm ministry officials to their forecasts for the domestic wheat crop, citing fears of spring flooding hampering sowings.
Both countries, but particularly Russia, suffered weak harvests last year, contributing to a doubling in wheat prices in many markets.
On Thursday, Strategie Grains cut its estimate for the European Union wheat harvest by 300,000 tonnes.
'Problem is money'
Russia's downgrade follows cautions from both the country's Grain Union and from influential analysis group SovEcon of poorer prospects.
Arkady Zlochevsky, head of the union, said on Tuesday that the late onset of spring had delayed the start of the sowing season for two weeks, and that a shortage of cash threatened efforts to lift spring plantings by 3m hectares to 31m hectares.
"The main problem is money," he said, noting that, while the government hoped growers would make up in spring sowings plantings lost in autumn to dry weather, the money available was less than a year ago.
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