MARS: 'Harvest in France almost lowest in 10 years'

In the MARS bulletin, the European Commission endorses the low yield expectations of potatoes, beets and maize in the European Union. For France, the estimate is even close to its lowest level in 10 years. The poor crop conditions in Western Europe and the recent heat wave in southeastern Europe mean that the harvest in Europe is described as mediocre.

Drought continues to play a serious role in France, northern Germany and western Poland. The European Commission also writes to France that the rain in August was too late to recover the crops. In addition, the sun remained strong. As a result, yield expectations for that country are near their lowest level in 10 years. The yields of ware potatoes, at 40,2 tons, are well below the average (42,4 tons). The quality is expected to be good, partly due to low disease pressure. In addition, an extremely low harvest is expected for the starch potatoes.

10% less in Germany
In the new MARS report Special attention is also paid to the most important areas for potato cultivation in Germany: North Rhine-Westphalia and Lower Saxony. Despite the precipitation in August, the water shortage has not been remedied, which means that potatoes and beets will not recover significantly. The expectations for the German harvest are therefore 10% below the 5-year average. Also for Poland it is not expected that the crops will recover significantly. The potato harvest in the country is expected to be 24,1 tons per hectare. That is 5% less than the 5-year average.

When we add up all the figures about the potato harvest in all of Europe, it turns out that the yield expectation is about 3% below the 5-year average. While the yield was already considerably reduced in the previous report, this has now been increased by just under 0,3%. This brings the expected yield to 32,8 tons per hectare, which is slightly lower than the 5-year average (33,8 tons per hectare). If we look at the important potato countries, we see a decrease of 3,3% for Belgium, 10% in Germany, 5,2% for France, 1,5% for the Netherlands and 5% for Poland.

Sugar beet yield expectations in Europe are increased by 1%, after a 4% drop in the previous report. In terms of absolute tons, the yield is therefore 72,2 tons per hectare. That is about 4% lower than the 5-year average.

Grains
Heatwaves have occurred in almost all parts of Europe since the end of August. This has resulted in lower yield expectations for maize in particular in Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria. The forecast for the total grain maize harvest in the European Union has therefore been lowered by almost 4%. The total grain harvest has also been reduced by 0,7% compared to August. Wheat forecast remains the same previous report† The wheat harvest is therefore almost complete.

Anne-Jan Doorn

Anne Jan Doorn is an arable expert at Boerenbusiness. He writes about the various arable farming markets and also focuses on the land and energy market.

aj.doorn@boerenbusiness. Nl

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