EU: European Commission lifts grain crop estimate despite this month’s flooding

The prospect of near-record yields in Spain, and benign conditions in Romania, spurred the European Commission to lift hopes for the bloc's grains harvest despite this month's "vast flooding" which has hit German crops, Agrimoney.com reported on June, 17.

The commission's Mars agriculture division hiked its estimate for the barley yield in Spain - the EU's biggest producer of spring barley - by 0.6 tonnes per hectare, raising the forecast for the soft wheat result too by 0.2 tonnes per hectare thanks to the country's "good crop conditions".

"Yield potentials both for winter and spring cereals are among the highest ever," Mars said, flagging the impact of below-normal temperatures in preserving soil moisture and "favouring the ripening of winter crops in southern regions".

Temperatures averaging up to 4 degrees Celsius below normal have "permitted the maintenance of sufficient soil moisture, despite the cumulated precipitation during the past month having been lower than the long-term average for most regions".

Prospects for harvests in Hungary and Romania too were upgraded, thanks to abundant rainfall, albeit so much that they "created favourable conditions for plant pests and disease".

Nonetheless, in Hungary "frequent and abundant rainfall in May", which had kept "the soil moisture content at optimal level", prompted Mars to lift forecasts in particular for the country's corn yield, which was hiked by 1.6 tonnes per hectare to 7.6 tonnes per hectare.

For Romania, Mars flagged that "ample rainfall" meant that "the soil moisture reached optimal or normal levels under winter crops", and lifted in particular the estimate for the winter barley yield, by 0.6 tonnes per hectare.

However, the yield forecast for Romania's corn yield was upgraded too, given the prospect of better moisture for the spring-sown grain, by 0.5 tonnes per hectare to 3.87 tonnes per hectare.

Mars officials acknowledged some setbacks to crops too over the past month, notably the "many high rainfall events in central Europe, which led to vast flooding in the vicinity of the rivers affected".

This had increased soil moisture levels in areas affected "to critical levels, increasing the risk of pests and constraining plant development".

In Germany, the EU's second-ranked grains producing country, soils in many regions were "fully saturated, increasing the risk of nutrient deficiency, pest damage and constrained plant development due to a lack of oxygen at the root system on heavy soils".

Low levels of sunshine "could potentially hamper the stem elongation of cereals and thus the accumulated plant biomass at the flowering stage", Mars said, trimming its forecast for the German soft wheat yield by 0.1 tonnes per hectare, and for barley and corn by 0.2 tonnes per hectare.

However, country upgrades outweighed downgrades to prompt Mars to nudge its forecast for the yield on the EU all-wheat crop, the world's biggest, to 5.32 tonnes per hectare.

This estimate is exactly in line with that last week from the US Department of Agriculture in its much-watched monthly Wasde report on world crop supply and demand.

However, Mars was more upbeat on barley and corn yields, which were upgraded to 4.68 tonnes per hectare and 7.13 tonnes per hectare respectively, above USDA figures of 4.51 tonnes per hectare and 7.01 tonnes per hectare.

19 June, 2013