EU crop monitor cuts maize forecast again due to heat in southeast
MARS cut its EU grain yield forecasts on August 26, with the 2024 maize yield down to 7.03 t/ha, 6% below last year, due to heat in southeast Europe. Romania’s maize yield forecast fell to 3.83 t/ha, and Hungary’s to 6.46 t/ha. Soft wheat yield was reduced to 5.68 t/ha, and rapeseed to 3.07 t/ha.
PARIS, Aug 26 (Reuters) -Crop monitoring service MARS on Monday cut most of its average grain yield forecasts for the European Union this year, with another sharp reduction for maize as hot weather continues to take a toll on crops in southeast Europe.
Forecasters have been reducing their projections for the upcoming EU maize crop mainly due to hot weather in Romania, which previously vied with France as the EU’s biggest maize producer.
In a monthly report, MARS pegged the average 2024 maize yield at 7.03 metric tons per hectare (t/ha), down from 7.24 t/ha in July and now 6% below last year.
“Summer crops were particularly severely impacted in regions where the hot conditions coincided with limited water availability, as was often the case in Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Greece,” MARS said.
Detailed estimates showed that MARS cut its forecast for Romania’s maize yield to 3.83 t/ha from 4.08 in July, now 18% below last year, and lowered the Hungarian yield to 6.46 t/ha, against 6.77 t/ha last month, 21% below last year.
Temperatures in Romania were on average 2.0–3.5 degrees Celsius higher than usual in most of the country, making this the warmest July 1–Aug. 17 period in MARS records, it said.
Warmer-than-usual conditions were forecast to continue this week in many parts of Europe, with temperatures up to 8 degrees Celsius above the 1991–2023 long-term average in parts of southern Hungary, Serbia and eastern Ukraine, MARS said.
The office also cut its average yield forecast for EU soft wheat, the most produced cereal in the bloc, to 5.68 t/ha from 5.87 t/ha projected last month and 2% below last year. Total barley yields (winter and spring) were seen at 5.01 t/ha, down from 5.09 t/ha in July, but still 8% above 2023.
“The poor performance of winter cereals (in particular soft wheat and winter barley), is mostly due to excessively wet conditions that affected large parts of western and northern Europe,” MARS said.
In Baltic countries, intense rainfall reduced grain quality while frequent rain hampered harvesting in northern France, Benelux countries and north-western Germany, where winter crops had already been impacted by wet conditions for most of the season.
The average soft wheat yield in France, the EU’s largest grower of the cereal which was particularly hit by wet weather, is now expected at 6.20 t/ha, down from 6.75 t/ha in July and 16% below 2023, MARS said.
In oilseeds, MARS cut the rapeseed yield this year to 3.07 t/ha, from 3.10 t/ha forecast last month and now 3% below last year, while it left its forecast for sugar beet at 73.4 t/ha, in line with the five-year average.
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