The Agriculture Ministry forecast on Friday that Germany's 2018 winter wheat harvest would fall 19.1 percent from the 2017 level to 19.4 million tonnes after crops suffered from drought and hot weather. The ministry also forecast Germany's 2018 grains harvest would be 34.5 million tonnes, down 15.8 percent on the year.
German crops wilted under the highest summer temperatures since 1881 and prolonged dryness. EU wheat prices hit five-year highs in August on concern about supplies. German Agriculture Minister Julia Kloeckner announced a special aid programme on Wednesday worth up to 340 million euros ($389 million) to help farms facing closure after the dry summer damaged harvests.
But the ministry's winter wheat forecast was considerably higher than the 18.6 million tonnes forecast on Wednesday by Germany's farming association, which had been calling for up to 1 billion euros in special drought aid. Kloeckner said on Thursday the grains and rapeseed harvests were disappointing and said this justified her decision to declare the drought a weather event of national importance with special aid available to farmers.
Germany's winter rapeseed harvest was forecast by the ministry to fall 14.5 percent on the year to 3.64 million tonnes. Supplies of animal feed grains are especially tight after the drought. The crop of the feed grain winter barley is forecast by the ministry to fall 17.9 percent to 7.40 million tonnes.
But the harvest of spring barley, used for beer and malt production, is expected to rise 21 percent to 2.2 million tonnes.
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