Autumn sowing has progressed well over the past month and for the majority of farmers it will be coming to an end. However, figures released by the Scottish Government have outlined that they expect both the area of cereals grown in 2018 and the yields, to fall, leading to a reduced production for 2018.

Weather conditions have been the main dictating factor for the likely drop with both planting and growing conditions proving difficult. Around 420,000ha of cereals are estimated to have been grown this year, 3% lower than 2017. This drop in area, combined with an estimated 6% decrease in yield, is leading to predictions of a 9% drop in production.

Spring barley has seen the biggest drop of around 10% in terms of yield, with overall production down by 7%, this was due to more people moving from winter barley to spring barley due to the difficult sowing conditions experienced in autumn 2017, which resulted in an increase in the area of spring barley to 250,500ha.

Combinable Crops chairIan Sands, who farms at Balbeggie near Perth said: “Few Scottish arable growers will be surprised by the harvest figures. Planting conditions in autumn 2017 and spring 2018, combined with the summer drought, were always going to challenge yields and production in Scotland. That is certainly being reflected in the current spot prices for cereals.

European production

Total EU cereal production for 2018 is expected to be at 284.3m tonnes, a decrease of 5% compared to 2017/18 and a decrease of 8% compared to the last five-year average, the report published last Wednesday says.

This follows the European farm organisation Copa Cogeca’s estimate that the harvest would be back by 12%.

The Commission says that the EU wheat harvest has suffered the most from this summer’s dry conditions, leading to a decrease of 9% compared to 2017. The wheat production forecast is set at 129m tonnes for 2018. While weather became more favourable from mid-August in parts of central and northern Europe, the improvements were too small or came too late to significantly improve the yield outlook for crops in those areas.