The impact of Russia's drought on farmers look set to extend into next year, threatening a "significant decrease" in winter sowings in the core Volga Valley farming region, SovEcon has said.

Farmers in the region, one of the areas worst affected by Russia's worst drought in 130 years, have only a fortnight left until starting plantings, which are undertaken early so as to allow crops to enter well-developed into what are often harsh winter conditions.

Yet the fields there "have had no rain", said Andrey Sizov, managing director of SovEcon, the analysis group whose warnings at the end of June first drew global attention to the threat posed to Russia by drought.

While Volga farmers – responsible for nearly one-third of Russia's winter sowings last year - had some leeway for altering sowing strategy, they faced having "to sow in dry soil, which does not make a lot of sense", Mr Sizov told Agrimoney.com.

"It's too early to say what the planting area in the Volga region will be. But there is the risk of a significant decrease in [winter] planting area."

Spring vs winter

Some growers were likely to sow anyway into parched soil, and hope for rain to germinate the crop in time for winter.

"They still have fixed costs - leasing payments, land taxes and so on - to cover. It may still economically be better to plant, and harvest a poor crop, than not to plant at all."

There was some scope too to delay some sowings to spring, and accepting lower yields offered by these later-planted varieties.

"But it's not so easy to change the whole crop to spring – there are matters such as crop rotation which have to be taken into account," he said.

Other areas

While some other of Russia's parched regions also faced a sowing deadline, winter crops were less of an issue representing 70,000 hectares of planting in Urals last year, and 290,000 hectares in Siberia.

Volga farmers planted 4.7m hectares of winter crops for this year's harvest, up 600,000 hectares year on year.

Farmers in North Caucasus, a big winter crop region, may make up for some of the Volga shortfall. While drought was now setting in there too, a later winter allowed an extended sowing deadline.

"Farmers there have a huge advantage over the Volga because they can plant later," Mr Sizov said, adding that higher grain prices were a "huge motivation" to raise sowings.

However, due to a limited volume of set aside land this increase would not be significant.