The European Union's crop monitor raised its outlook for 2017 maize and sugar beet yields for the second month in a row, saying rain helped crops in countries such as France and Germany and offset the impact of drought and heatwaves elsewhere. In a monthly report issued on Monday, the MARS service put the EU grain maize yield at 6.99 tonnes per hectare (t/ha), up from 6.93 t/ha estimated in August.
This was 1.4 percent above the average level of the past five years, although 2.2 percent lower than the 2016 yield, it said. Upward revisions to projected yields in France and Romania, the EU's two largest maize producers, offset cuts in countries affected by extreme heat and low rainfall including Spain and Croatia, it said.
The crop monitor also increased its sugar beet yield estimate for the 2017 crop to 76.9 t/ha, from 74.7 t/ha previously, citing upward revisions for Germany and Poland. This would be 6.6 percent above the five-year average and 3.7 percent higher than in 2016, it said. Maize and sugar beet benefited from rain that disrupted harvesting of earlier-grown crops such as wheat and barley in Germany and the UK, it said.
The crop monitor raised marginally its estimate for this year's soft wheat yield in the 28-member bloc to 5.86 t/ha from 5.85 t/ha, slightly above the five-year average. In oilseeds, the estimated rapeseed yield for 2017 was trimmed to 3.25 t/ha from 3.27 t/ha, but was still slightly above the five-year mean. The projected EU sunflower yield was increased to 2.11 t/ha from 1.97 t/ha, now 8.5 percent above the five-year average, mainly due to an upward revision for Romania.