PARIS: France’s farm ministry on Tuesday increased slightly its estimate of the area sown with soft wheat for the 2023 harvest, while making a sharper upward revision for rapeseed sowing.

The winter soft wheat area was now seen at 4.76 million hectares, compared with an initial estimate of 4.75 million in December. The new estimate was up 2% compared with the area harvested in 2022 and 0.4% higher than the average of the past five years, the ministry said in a crop report. For winter rapeseed, the expected area for this year’s harvest was increased to 1.34 million hectares from 1.29 million estimated in December, now 9% above last year’s level and nearly 11% higher than the five-year average.

France is the European Union’s biggest grain grower and soft wheat and rapeseed are, respectively, its most produced cereal and oilseed crops. Winter soft wheat and rapeseed account for almost all production of the crops in France. For barley, the ministry raised its estimate of the winter area to 1.34 million hectares from an initial projection of 1.30 million. That was 3.7% up from last year and 7% above the five-year mean.

Barley production in France includes a significant amount of spring crop. The ministry is due to give a first estimate of the spring barley area in April. For durum wheat, used to make pasta, the ministry kept unchanged its estimate of winter crop sowing for this year at 233,000 hectares, 4.8% less than last year and 12.6% below the five-year mean.

French wheat and barley crops were in very good shape ahead of winter. But crops are now facing a dry February, raising some market concerns ahead of the key spring growing season.

For the 2022 harvest, estimated sugar beet production was revised up slightly to 31.60 million tonnes, but the volume was down 8% from the previous year. Spring-sown crops like sugar beet and maize were hurt by drought and heat waves last year.

Estimated grain maize output, excluding crop grown for seeds, was kept at 10.58 million tonnes, 30% below 2021.