PARIS: France’s farm ministry on Tuesday estimated that planting of the country’s main wheat crop for the 2025 harvest will rebound sharply after drier November weather averted a repeat of rain-hit sowing a year earlier.

Farmers in France, the European Union’s biggest grain producer, are expected to sow 4.51 million hectares of winter soft wheat for next year, up 8.7% compared with the area harvested this year, the ministry said in a crop report.

Fewer showers and mild temperatures last month allowed growers to catch up on earlier rain delays that had threatened a similar setback to last autumn, when waterlogged conditions slashed planting and contributed to the smallest wheat harvest since the 1980s in 2024.