The?government announced on Wednesday that Russia has set its grain export quota to protect the domestic market at 20 million metric tonnes?for second half of?marketing season.

The second half marketing season will run from February 15, 2026 to June 30, 2020.

Russia, which is the largest wheat exporter in the world, allows exports to be quota free during the first half of the marketing season, from July to Februar. The rest of the marketing season is then governed by quotas, which are allocated to exporters according to their performance.

The new quota applies to barley, wheat, meslin, and corn. Exports of rye were banned in the second half of the season. The quota for last year was 10.6 million tonnes and only applied to wheat and meslin.

Analysts with Rusagrotrans, a rail carrier, estimated that wheat exports during the first half of the season (?July-December) were 25.5 million tonnes. This is down from 29.1 millions tons a year ago.

Russia plans to export between 53 and 55 millions metric tons of grain during the current marketing period. Last year, Russia export 53 million metric tons, including 44 millions tons of wheat.

The Russian grain exports dropped sharply over the past two seasons, from a high of?70 millions tons in 2023-2024. This undermines President Vladimir Putin's aim to increase agricultural exports by half by 2030. (Reporting and Writing by Anastasia Teterevleva, Gleb Bryanski and Thomas Derpinghaus; Editing and Lidia Kelly)

(source: Reuters)