Warehouses in Serbia currently have about 4.5 million tons of wheat, this year’s crop and extremely large stocks from 2022. Serbia annually consumes about 1.7 million tons of grain for domestic needs and has it for export as well.
In addition, Serbia also faces serious logistical problems when it comes to grain exports.
3.43 million tons of wheat were harvested from almost 700,000 hectares this year. The fact that the crop was a record, remained in the shadow of the story about the price, which the producers were not satisfied with neither in the harvest, nor today.
Wheat is exported to 23 countries of the world. In the structure of European exports, Serbia participates with 1.1 percent and is in 12th place.
“In addition to the 700,000 tons of harvest from 2021 that we transferred to 2022/2023. and the impossibility of exporting due to the ban and export under the quota regime, which was hardly applicable, we had a tendency to expect producers and owners of goods that the price of wheat would rise rapidly during the previous year, so many decided to store the goods”, says Sunčica Savović, director of the Association “Grain of Serbia”.
At this moment it is difficult to predict what will happen in the market. Even people who have been in the grain sector on the world market for decades cannot give a reasonable explanation why raw material prices are falling while food prices are rising rapidly.
“The largest export is realized to Italy in the amount of 306 thousand tons, which is 38% of the total export.” Followed by Romania with 186 thousand tons, Bosnia and Herzegovina with 100 thousand tons, North Macedonia with 86 thousand tons and Albania with 57 thousand tons. The most important markets are obviously the neighboring countries, while in 2023 there will be significantly less export to Romania, which in previous years was a far larger importer of wheat from Serbia,” says Branislav Vlahović from the Faculty of Agriculture in Novi Sad.
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