Cooler-than-average temperatures in the Middle Urals have left many farmers with crops that are growing too slowly to harvest.

Despite recent heavy rains, forage and grass crops have not reached their expected growth markers. As a result, farmers are having difficulty harvesting produce for sale or grass feed for their livestock.

“Many had expected growth of grass that it will be more,” Pyotr Shestakov, the head of the Sverdlovsk Department of Agriculture said. “We orient them: do wait to [harvest]. Yes, now you get less yield of green mass, but the higher the nutritional value of food due to the timely harvesting.”

Lack of warm temperatures has stunted the growth of many crops, but many agricultural experts believe thermophilic corn has been affected the most. This year’s crop of corn in the Sverdlovsk region has dwindled the greatest between planting and harvesting.

In order to recuperate some of their losses, farmers have harvested the corn deemed inedible for humans and have turned it into animal feed through a process called threshing.

“Corn needs warm nights, and they were not, so she has not grown,” Irbitskogo Chairman Valery Nikiforov said. “This year, some of its going to tresh.”

However, Ural Research Institute for Agriculture specialist Mikhail Namayatov said there may be hope yet for a good corn harvest in the Sverdlovsk region. Namayatov said corn crops can grow quickly with just one or two days of warm weather, and such a quick and acute growth may save Ural-area farmers from having a financially fruitless summer season.

“Now we only need to heat,” Namyatova said. “Moisture in the fields there will be a temperature above 25 degrees (celsius)– and everything goes into growth. Especially as with mineral fertilizers this year, our agricultural worked well, and tried to hold sitting in a short time.”

Source - http://yekaterinburgnews.com/