Poor weather will reduce European Union oilseed crops this year, Hamburg-based analysts Oil World said. "The extent of the crop damage is still unknown, but recent detrimental weather will reduce this year's production of rapeseed, sunflowerseed and wheat in the European Union more or less sizeably below previous expectations," Oil World said.
It added: "We have recently seen a slowdown of farmer selling in Europe as farmers are struggling with detrimental weather conditions and are uncertain about their crops.
"Consumers of vegetable oils and oilmeals are greatly concerned about production losses in oilseeds and the increasing risk that the global production deficit will be considerably larger than anticipated in the world crop season September-August 2007-08."
Worries about crops had been partly behind recent price increases for rapeseed, rapeseed products, sunflowerseed and sunoil, it said. "Too much rain has damaged wheat and rapeseed crops in several parts of the UK, France, Germany and Poland," it said. This made it impossible to harvest mature rapeseed.
"In contrast, dryness and too hot conditions caused irreversible damage to rapeseed, wheat, sunflowers and other crops in the eastern regions of the European Union, primarily in Hungary and Bulgaria," it said. It added: "Lower rapeseed and sunflowerseed crops in Ukraine and Russia will reduce seed exports. EU crushers of sunflowerseed will thus have more difficulties in covering their requirements."