Below-average yield forecasts for most crops in the EU

Severe impacts of hot conditions on summer crop in the south

The downward revision of the yield forecast for summer crops (particularly grain maize and sunflowers) is mainly due to exceptionally high temperatures that occurred during the review period in most of southern, southern-central and eastern Europe. Summer crops were particularly impacted in regions where the hot conditions coincided with limited water availability, as was often the case in Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Greece.

High rainfall impacted winter crops in the north

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. During the current review period, this was particularly the case in the Baltic countries, where an extremely intense rainfall event resulted in lodging and reduced grain quality, substantially decreasing the hitherto positive yield expectations. Frequent rainfall, yet less extreme, also hampered harvesting in northern France, the Benelux countries and north-western Germany, where winter crops had already been impacted by overly wet conditions during most of the season.

Further information

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