OREANDA-NEWS  Russia in 2018 has collected a good harvest of grain-110 million tons in net weight, said the head of the Ministry of agriculture Dmitry Patrushev at a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"Today we have grain and leguminous crops threshed on 100% of the area. The main thing is that, despite the somewhat unfavorable weather conditions, we managed to collect a good harvest — 110 million tons in net weight, which is 11% more than the average annual values over the past five years," Patrushev said, whose words are given in the message on the Kremlin website.

According to the Head of the Ministry of Agriculture, this year it is also planned to collect 18 million tons of oilseeds, which is 1.5 million tons more than a year earlier. Beet harvest is almost completed, the harvest exceeded 41 million tons. In addition, 6.7 million tons of potatoes, 4.2 million tons of open ground vegetables, almost 1 million tons of closed ground vegetables and more than 1 million tons of fruits and berries were harvested.

"Mr President, I can briefly report on the sowing of winter crops. Currently, sowing has been carried out on an area of more than 17.5 million hectares, last year the figure was half a million hectares lower. We expect that the condition of winter crops will be quite good, we hope for sufficient snow cover and favorable weather," the Minister added.

The forecast of the Ministry of agriculture of the Russian Federation for grain harvest was 70 million tons. In 2017, Russia received a record harvest in its history-135.4 million tons in net weight, including 85.9 million tons of wheat. Grain harvest in 2016 amounted to 120.7 million tons.

In October, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev ordered to sell up to 1.5 million tons of grain from the intervention Fund in the domestic and foreign markets. The corresponding order was published on Monday on the website of the Cabinet of Ministers.