France's farmers have made no significant progress in summer barley sowing last week, reports French agricultural consultancy FranceAgriMer, adding that the heavy rainfall has brought fieldwork to the largest crop producer in the European Union to a standstill.
As of March 2, spring barley in France was sown on 33% of the planned areas, compared to the previous week this was an advance of just 1%. A year ago at the same time, sowing of spring barley had already been completed on 88% of the planned areas. The sowing pace has slipped below the 5-year average this year.
Spring barley sowing began in late January and made rapid progress at the start due to the unusually mild temperatures. However, frequent showers in February, during which parts of northern France recorded record rainfall for this month, flooded some fields that were still very wet after heavy rains in the fall.
In the northern region of Hauts-de-France, summer barley sowing was until the 2ndMarch ended at 7%, unchanged from the previous week and compared to 82% a year ago, while sowing in Lorraine in the north-east had come to a standstill of 2% compared to 85% a year earlier, according to FranceAgriMer.
After further showers this week and also in the next week, traders increasingly expect the intended sowing to be switched from spring barley to maize planted later.
For common wheat, France's most important grain, the condition of the plants remained unchanged during the week until March 2nd. FranceAgriMer rated 64% of the plants as good or excellent.
The rating remained well below last season's level, when 86% of common wheat at the same stage was rated as good / excellent.
The winter barley rating fell from 66% to 65%, well below the previous year's value of 80%.
Winter wheat and barley were faced with difficult sowing conditions in the very humid autumn in France. Analysts are assuming that the wheat area for this year's harvest will decrease sharply.
Source
HANSA Terminhandel
