Friday, 28 August 2015 16:39
HAMBURG: European Union wheat harvesting is almost finished with good average crops in the main producers, and with a record in the largest grower France, observers said on Friday.
French growers group AGPB said France’s soft wheat harvest would be a new record, surpassing 40 million tonnes, up from 37.5 million tonnes last year after highest-ever yields were achieved.
“Despite the deep concern caused by the heatwave temperatures, we have had some nice surprises,” said AGPB president Philippe Pinta. France’s harvest is now finished.
Other observers also forecast a record French crop of around 39-40 million tonnes, after wheat crops survived dry, hot weather in early summer.
French quality is also better than year’s poor levels, with the exception of protein content which was expected to stay close to the 11.1 percent average in 2014.
In the second largest producer Germany, the crop will fall by 5 percent on last year’s especially good harvest to a good average 26.4 million tonnes, Germany’s agriculture ministry said. Harvesting is almost finished apart from late northern areas and quality is overall good, the ministry said.
In third largest producer Britain, heavy rain slowed harvesting during the last week, raising some quality concerns. Crop consultants ADAS estimate Britain’s harvest was 45 percent complete on Tuesday, up from 40 percent a week earlier but behind the five-year average of around 60 percent.
“Most crops harvested over the last week required drying with moisture contents ranging from 15 to 21 percent,” ADAS said.
ADAS said quality has so far held up well despite the rain but concerns were emerging that there could be increased supplies of feed wheat. “With the UK weather now marking further harvesting a snap and grab exercise, quality concerns will rise,” David Sheppard, managing director of merchant Gleadell said in a note.
Estimates for this year’s UK wheat crop range between 15.5 to 16.0 million tonnes, down from last year’s 16.6 million.
In the fourth largest producer Poland, harvesting is practically finished and should be completed in final northern area next week, said Wojtek Sabaranski of analysts Sparks Polska. “Both wheat yields and crops turned out to be better than projected before the harvest,” Sabaranski said. “We now see this year’s wheat crop at about 10.8 million tonnes, down 13 percent from 2014.”
“Thanks to favorable weather conditions during the harvest, the quality of this year’s grains is more than satisfactory.”
