PARIS: The soft wheat harvest in France, the European Union’s main grower, will rise 3.3% to 34.82 million metric tons this year, a “disappointing” volume mainly due to dry weather in large parts of the country, consultancy Agritel said on Wednesday.

The 2023 crop would still be 1.3% above the average of the past five years, Agritel, Argus Media’s agriculture analytics arm said, based on a survey of industry players on July 20-25.

“Late frosts in April in eastern France and, above all, a total lack of rain from mid-May to mid-June strongly reduced the production potential at the end of the cycle in the northern two-thirds of the country,” it said in a statement.

Two to three million tons of soft wheat crop potential were lost in May-June, Agritel Director General Gautier Le Molgat said.

Agritel’s forecast was based on the farm ministry’s area estimate of 4.77 million hectares, up 1.5% on 2022, and a yield of 7.30 tons per hectare. The farm ministry earlier this month had pegged the 2023 soft wheat crop at 35 million tons.