E-Malt.com News article: 3532

Czech Republic: USDA's October release estimates Czech barley, improved 16 % from last year to an estimated at 2.4 million tonnes. Barley is predominantly a spring-planted crop in the Czech Republic; unlike wheat, it suffered significantly less damage in the previous year’s cold winter.

The harvest in the Czech Republic was fully underway and progress was going very well during early August crop travel. Weather cooperated all season and remained favorable at harvest. All field stops and meetings with farmers and agriculture officials indicated a much better-than-average wheat crop was being collected. A mild winter with heavy snow cover had protected vegetation from frost damage. During the spring and summer, adequate rainfall and cool temperatures boosted yields of winter-sown crops. The only real problem with the winter crop development occurred during last fall's dry period which stunted emergence in some areas. This issue, however, was largely minimized by the favorable weather since. The well-known local adages of "a cool, wet May brings heaven to your barn" and a "white February makes a strong crop” both rang true this year. Wheat was in good condition (barley is largely spring-sown in the Czech Republic); the other major autumn-sown crop is rapeseed, and it had a near-record yield for the season. According to local farmers, the most essential ingredients for a bumper, high-quality rapeseed crop came together at just the right time this year: moderate weather at the end of the season with very little heat and just enough rain.

Heavy rains in late June created harvest delays. Typically, barley is harvested a couple weeks earlier than they were this year, but the rains compressed the harvest window. This forced simultaneous harvesting of barley, putting additional strain on farmers and resources. A reprieve arrived in July and August, as drier weather allowed harvesting and field activities to resume.

FAS staff visited both Moravia, in eastern Czech Republic, the country’s largest crop producing region, and the much smaller but still important agricultural region along the Elbe River, just east of Prague. Moravia is the Czech Republic's traditional breadbasket because of it large size and its high soil quality. Rainfall, although abundant this year, is the region's limiting agricultural factor as irrigation is rare. The abundant rains received this year underlie this season's successful crop in Moravia. The Elbe River Valley has lighter, less productive soils and less rainfall, but more irrigation. In addition to the primary crops of winter wheat, summer barley (mostly malting), corn, rapeseed, and sunflowerseed.


27 October, 2004