The area sown in Germany with winter rapeseed for the 2015 harvest is down 5.2 percent on the year to 1,323,000 hectares, German oilseeds industry association UFOP estimated on Tuesday. A survey commissioned by UFOP of 4,809 German farmers found that 38 percent of those questioned turned away from rapeseed because of long-term crop rotation plans, while 14 percent had made a short-term decision to plant other crops.
Some 11 percent said low rapeseed prices were the reason, while 10 percent said they had suffered poor weather in autumn and could not carry out their planting intentions, UFOP said. The total number of German farms growing rapeseed for the 2015 crop is likely to fall 2.3 percent on the year, UFOP estimated.
Germany is the European Union's largest producer of rapeseed, the bloc's main oilseed for vegetable oil and biodiesel production. Germany harvested 6.2 million tonnes of rapeseed in 2014, up from 5.7 million tonnes in 2013. Rapeseed crops in Germany are suffering unusually high levels of insect damage this autumn following the European Union's ban on a controversial insecticide previously used to protect the oilseed, UFOP said. But this damage has not significantly increased the area of rapeseed which needs to be ploughed over and re-sown, UFOP added. The EU has decided to restrict the use of a class of pesticides known as neonicotinoids which have been linked to a drop in the bee population and which were widely used as rapeseed seed treatments.
Rapeseed planted this autumn is the first to be grown in recent years without neonicotinoids. The extent of the insect damage is still unclear, UFOP said. It is possible that damaged rapeseed may be more vulnerable to frost this winter, it added.
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