French analyst Strategie Grains lifted its forecast for this year's soft wheat harvest in the European Union due to higher yield estimates following favourable weather conditions in many parts of the bloc in the last few weeks. Soft wheat output in the 28-member EU, including Croatia which will join the bloc on July 1, is now expected at 131.5 million tonnes, up 600,000 tonnes from last month's estimate and up 5 percent on the 2012 crop, the analyst said in a report on Thursday.
The increase was mainly due higher crop outlooks for wheat output in Hungary, Germany, France, Spain, the Czech Republic and Romania, it said. It was partly compensated by a cut in its forecast for Poland due to lower acreage estimates. Strategie Grains raised again its forecast for the European barley harvest now seen at 56.1 million tonnes, up from 55.3 million pegged last month, mainly due to better yields expected in Spain after good weather conditions in April and May.
The analyst had already lifted its estimate by 1.1 million in May as it expected a larger area sown with the cereal. It stressed, however that despite its higher forecast for the total barley harvest, malting barley output remained stable compared with last month at 11.6 million tonnes, down from 12.2 million in 2012. On the other hand, the analyst cut its outlook for this year's grain maize harvest in the EU by 400,000 tonnes, putting production at 66.0 million tonnes. This would remain 15 percent above last year's crop.
The biggest cut concerned Italy where maize sowing was disrupted by rain in the past month, Strategie Grains said. France's technical institute Arvalis told Reuters on Thursday that heavy rainfall in the past few days also hampered sowings in France. It said these adverse conditions were likely to prevent the sowing of up to 60,000 hectares of grain maize in south-western France, the country's top producing region.