France's exports of soft wheat outside the EU will fall to 4.8 million tonnes in 2016/17 from an estimated 12.5 million last season due to a weather-hit harvest in the bloc's biggest grain grower, agricultural group InVivo forecast on Wednesday. French soft wheat shipments within the European Union were expected to fall to 6.7 million tonnes from 7.5 million, which would give total exports of 11.5 million tonnes, down about 40 percent from last season and the lowest volume since 2001/02.
"This year, France's traditional clients will be supplied with other wheat origins (Black Sea, northern Europe, North America, Argentina) and with French wheat when opportunities arise," InVivo said in a statement. "Unlike previous years, wheat exports will therefore not follow a regular rhythm. Operators will have to adopt a different approach to seize opportunities, for example when prices in Black Sea countries (Russia, Ukraine) are less aggressive."
InVivo, a grouping of some 216 cooperatives, is one of the largest exporters of French grain through its trading division. Its export estimate was below the outlook given on Tuesday by consultancy Agritel, which projected French soft wheat exports outside the EU at 5.1 million tonnes and intra-EU exports at 7.3 million.
InVivo's export forecasts were based on estimated production of 29.8 million tonnes from this year's French harvest, down from a record 40.9 million in 2015. It said the final crop could range between 28 and 30 million tonnes, however, depending on the outcome of unfinished harvesting in the north. About a third of the wheat area in several major production regions was still to be harvested, it said. Forecasters have in the past month slashed their outlook for the French wheat crop as harvesting has shown severe effects from heavy rain, limited sunshine and plant disease in spring.
"France has never experienced before the weather sequence seen in May and June," InVivo said, noting that adverse conditions hit wheat crops during flowering and grain-filling. The weather problems are also expected to have led to mixed wheat quality and InVivo said it was ready to supply feed wheat markets overseas, building on previous sales to Spain and Asia.
The poor French crop would contribute to a fall in EU soft wheat production to 137.6 million tonnes from a record 151.4 million last year, with output in Germany, Poland and the Benelux countries also expected to fall due to unfavourable weather, it said.