French winter cereal area to fall 0.7% YOY in 2018: ministry
French winter cereal area is set to drop 0.7% year-on-year as poor weather and lower farmer planting eat into production, the French agriculture ministry agency Agreste said Tuesday in its first forecast of the 2018/19 marketing year.
Cold, wet weather in recent months has seen French crop conditions rated at their worst level in four years, while tough export conditions outside the EU have left the prospect of significant carryover stocks weighing on the market.
Soft wheat is forecast to increase just 0.2% year-on-year to 4.975 million hectares, although this figure remains 1.5% down on the five-year average, according to Agreste.
Based on average yields seen across France over the past five years, the planted area would account for somewhere in the region of 35.4 million mt of soft wheat production for the 2018/19 marketing year should the trend continue.
That figure is 2.8% below 2017/18 marketing year’s production and 1.1% below the five-year average.
Agreste says barley area is expected to fall around 2.8% year-on-year to 1.854 million hectares, driven primarily by a 3.5% cut to the planted area for winter barley, with the decrease most pronounced in Lorraine (down 9.8%) and Bourgogne (down 9.6%).
European tour
Across the EU, farmers took cues from the difficult 2017/18 year for European exporters and reduced their planted area accordingly as they face the task of clearing significant carryover stocks into the 2018/19 marketing year.
The French agriculture ministry forecasts an EU-wide decrease in planted soft wheat area for the third year in a row, falling 2% to 22.995 million hectares, with Germany and the UK accounting for the bulk of the decrease.
Durum wheat area is also set to drop 4.3% to 2.531 million hectares, with Spain and Italy paring back their planted area most significantly.
And with prices spiking significantly on the back of a global shortage, planted barley area is expected to increase a moderate 0.3% year-on-year to 12.206 million hectares, as decreases to Spanish, French and UK area are offset by a higher planted area in Germany.