The European Commission released its latest crop monitoring report on Monday 21 August, which showed that there has been little change to the EU crop yield outlook.
However, it mentioned that extreme weather events affected crops in many parts of Europe over the past few weeks.
The report takes into account data from 1 July to 13 August. Extreme weather events took place in that time, with rainfall hampering harvest in the north and heatwaves negatively impacting summer crops in the south of Europe.
However, the events have caused little change to EU yield outlooks, most likely because crops were already reported as being average in previous reports.
'Abundant rain' and hot weather
The report stated that: “Abundant rain in frequent events, in many parts of northwestern, northern central and northern Europe, benefited summer crops, but caused delays to the harvesting of winter and spring crops.
"Most seriously affected are northwestern France, the Benelux countries and large parts of Germany. Negative impacts are expected to mainly concern grain quality.”
Hot and dry weather was a problem for summer crops in Bulgaria, southern and eastern Romania, Czech Republic and central Poland.
Torrential rain caused damage to crops in northern Italy, Slovenia and Croatia.
Yields
Overall, the yield outlook for cereal crops remained unchanged in the report.
Spring barley yield was forecast down 1% from July. However, spring barley yield is forecast down 14% from the five-year average.
The current forecast in the report is for a yield of 3.6t/ha (1.5t/ac). The five-year average yield is 4.19t/ha (1.7t/ac).
Grain maize yield was also forecast down 1%, while the sunflower yield forecast increased 3% from the July report.
Green maize yield was also forecast down 1%.
Grain prices decline
Grain prices were declining on Monday and last week. Competitive Black Sea grain supplies have been reported as one of the reasons for this decline.
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