Europe’s farmers, faced with rotting and diseased crops still sitting in some fields, see more pain ahead as ever more rain delays winter planting.
In northwest Europe, October marks a transition between one crop cycle and the next. Farmers finish harvesting their summer produce and plant for winter. But bad weather could mean a second year of losses after the region’s agricultural powerhouse France recorded its worst wheat harvest in decades.
New planting is progressing at a glacial pace, with some fields too soggy for tractors to even enter. Meanwhile, disease is impacting the quality of some crops. There’s little respite in sight, with rains forecast over the UK, France and Italy this weekend, according to forecaster Maxar Technologies Inc.
“We can’t even go into the field to plant the wheat seeds as it is flooded with water, and this current week of sunshine will not be enough,” said Victor Rabier, president of a farmers’ group in the Essonne department south of Paris. “So, I am left with rotting onions and not being able to plant wheat on about 7% of my plantation.”
The possibility of even more crop loss and damage comes as European farmers are struggling to sell their limited supplies, losing out on a recent rise in global futures. European wheat is priced higher than grain from the Black Sea area, making it uncompetitive despite signs of supply tightness globally.
France’s powerful farming unions have given the new government until mid-November to meet their demands for more support — which include protecting inter-European trade from cheaper imports. They’ve vowed to renew actions similar to the national blockades from earlier this year.
Wheat and rapeseed production in the UK is seen falling significantly in 2024 because of bad weather, making the country “much more reliant on imports than usual this season,” according to the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board’s latest estimates.
Meanwhile, France’s maize harvest is progressing at the slowest pace in 11 years, with only 25% of the crop cut as of 21 October compared with the 69% five-year average, according to FranceAgriMer data. French soft-wheat and winter barley plantings are also well below the five-year average, with fields already saturated from the wettest September in 25 years.
A combination of reduced sucrose and fungal disease is seen hitting French sugar beets, said Timothe Masson, economist at farmers’ group CGB.
For farmers like Rabier it means his fields are increasingly not financially viable.
“We are still emerging from a harvest that was catastrophic,” he said. “With grain prices that aren’t high enough, we are finding ourselves this year between a loss in revenue and rising expenses.”
Also read:Rainy weather yields poor harvests for grain farmers
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Publish date : 2024-10-25 23:30:00
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