Forecasting harvest is like shooting in the dark: Kazakhstan Agriculture Minister

Kazakhstan Agriculture Minister told at the briefing in Kazakhstan President's Central Communications Service that it was impossible to forecast the harvest, Tengrinews.kz reports. "It is impossible to forecast the harvest. I can tell you from the technology point of view that there will be enough moisture this spring to get good seedlings. Everything will then depend on moisture in summer. If there is none, the situation will be different. So speaking now about the harvest is just like shooting in the dark," Assylzhan Mamytbekov said. According to him, Kazakhstan had good snow this winter, which will have a positive effect on the harvest. "Last autumn was quite warm with the sufficient number of rains. There was also enough snow. This gives us good hopes for the coming harvest. However, we cannot give any exact numbers. I can only give the statistics that our average harvest was 17.7 million tons of grain in 2008-2012. The average in 2003-2012 was 16.6 million tons," the Minister said.