The European Union’s crop monitoring service on Monday decreased its forecast for this 12 months’s common EU gentle wheat, maize and rapeseed yields for a 3rd consecutive month, and warned of a big fall in wheat high quality after summer season rains.
Nearly every day precipitation since mid-July within the giant grain areas of north-western France, the Benelux and south-western Germany severely hampered the harvesting of the remaining winter crops, significantly wheat and rapeseed, whereas creating optimum circumstances for fungal ailments, it stated in a report.
Rain round harvesting is predicted to have result in “substantial impacts on grain high quality, significantly of wheat” and can result in a “vital lower” of the quantity of wheat of milling high quality produced in these areas, MARS stated.
Impacts on crops had been troublesome to evaluate at this stage and its forecasts had been primarily based on the idea of minor impacts from rain on yields at nationwide degree, it stated.
Sizzling climate in southern Europe was elevating concern for summer season crops, primarily in Bulgaria, Italy and Spain.
In its month-to-month outlook, the MARS service minimize its gentle wheat yield estimate to five.78 metric tons per hectare (t/ha) from 5.80 t/ha projected final month, now just under final 12 months’s 5.79 t/ha.
It additionally lowered its grain maize yield forecast to 7.45 t/ha from 7.53 t/ha forecast in July, up 26% from final 12 months’s drought-hit harvest however according to the five-year common.
It left its 2023 all-barley yield estimate unchanged at 4.74 t/ha, now 6% beneath 2022, as a fall in its spring barley yield estimate was compensated by an increase within the winter barley one.
For oilseeds, MARS trimmed its yield forecast for this 12 months’s rapeseed harvest to three.19 t/ha, from 3.20 t/ha anticipated in July and three.33 t/ha in 2022, whereas it raised its yield outlook for the later-harvested sunflower seed crop, to 2.18 t/ha from 2.12 t/ha final month and 1.87 t/ha final 12 months.
For sugar beet, MARS barely raised its yield forecast to 73.7 t/ha, up from 73.3 t/ha projected final month and now 2% above the five-year common.
Supply: Reuters (Reporting by Gus Trompiz and Sybille de La Hamaide; Modifying by Bernadette Baum and David Evans)
