Farm office FranceAgriMer said on Friday that 92 percent of French soft wheat crops were in good or excellent condition as of March 21, unchanged from a week earlier. The latest weekly rating was still above the year-ago score of 90 percent, FranceAgriMer's crop data showed.
Crop development was ahead of last year's pace. Some 65 percent of soft wheat had reached the 1 cm ear growth stage, compared with 40 percent a year earlier. That was 11 days earlier than the average of the past five years, data showed. Two of the soft wheat crop had reached the subsequent two-node stage against zero a year ago. For winter barley, some 66 percent of the crop had reached the 1 cm ear growth stage, compared with 37 percent a year earlier, 9 days ahead of the past fiver years, while 1 percent of the winter barley crop had reached the subsequent two-node stage against zero percent a year ago.
Sowing of spring barley was 90 percent complete, up from 47 percent a week earlier but below the pace last year when 96 percent of the area had been sown by the same date. Eleven percent of the spring barley crop had emerged by March 21, against 35 percent by the same stage in 2015.