EU: Fairly late in July very warm and dry summer weather moved from the Iberian Peninsula through France into Central and Northern Europe, enabling farmers to harvest their grain fields. At this point it looks as if the EU-25 will have a very large barley crop of excellent quality, analysts revealed. It is too early to show a new supply and demand balance, but optimistic estimates put the EU surplus of malting barley at 2.0 million tonnes. The EU intra-trade will be smaller than usual, because local supplies are bigger than in the past two years. Prices reacted downwards, typically first in France and the U.K., because of their good crops, but also due to their quicker commercial reaction to a new situation. The inflexibility of Danes, Czechs and Slovaks may cost them market shares and financial losses this year.

01 September, 2004