French farmers are expected to cut sharply their sowings of sugar beet and rapeseed for this year's harvest while increasing the area for soft wheat and barley, the country's farm ministry said on Tuesday. In its first estimate of the 2019 sugar beet area, the ministry pegged sowings at 455,000 hectares, down 6.3 percent from 2018.
A smaller sugar beet area has been anticipated in France and other European Union countries as growers and sugar companies react to a price slump that followed the end of EU production quotas 18 months ago. The estimated sugar beet sowings would nonetheless be 4.8 percent above the average of the previous five years, the French farm ministry said in a crop report.
Rapeseed sowings, including a minimal amount of spring crop, were estimated at 1.32 million hectares, down 18.5 percent compared with last year and 13.1 percent below the five-year average. The estimate was below the 1.34 million hectares of winter rapeseed projected by the ministry in February. The ministry attributed most of the downward adjustment to the destruction of close to 20,000 hectares of rapeseed after traces of an unauthorised genetically modified variety were found in imported seed.
Sowing of rapeseed, France's main oilseed crop, was already disrupted by drought last year. Cereals were expected to gain area this year. Soft wheat sowings, including a very small spring wheat area, were seen at 5.01 million hectares, up 2.8 percent compared with 2018. The estimate was stable compared with February's winter soft wheat projection and also in line with the average soft wheat area of the past five years.
The barley area in 2019 was forecast at 1.9 million hectares, up 7.7 percent versus 2018 and 3.4 percent above the five-year average. That included an expected 17.4 percent jump in spring barley sowings to 569,000 hectares, with the ministry noting particularly sharp increases in the Pays de la Loire and Centre regions.
The winter barley area was pegged at 1.34 million hectares, up 4.0 percent from last year and also above the ministry's February estimate of 1.32 million. The durum wheat area, however, was seen falling 9.7 percent from last year to 319,000 hectares. The ministry will give its first area estimate for maize, sowing of which is under way, next month.