EU farmers sow more grains for 2011

Farmers in Europe are planting extra grains at the expense of oilseeds for next year's harvest, following the wet weather that added to financial incentives for farmers in sowing wheat.

 

Growers will sow 57.2 million hectares with grains for 2011, a rise of 1.2 million hectares year on year, Strategie Grains said in its first plantings estimate for next year.

 

Seedings of barley and soft wheat will rise by roughly the average rate, with corn sowings showing a stronger rebound.

 

However, oilseed sowings will drop by 300,000 hectares to 11.4 million hectares. Plantings of rapeseed, the region's major oilseed, will suffer a particular drop, of some 5%.

 

Strategie Grains attributed the fall in rapeseed sowings, which have already finished in Europe, to difficult planting conditions during August and September, when Germany and Poland in particular suffered heavy rains.

 

The two countries between them account for some 40% of EU rapeseed production.

 

The forecast of a sowings switch was echoed in a report from an international broker, given to Agrimoney.com on condition of anonymity, which also noted that farmers' margins were "currently more favourable for wheat than oilseed rape".

 

EU seedings of winter wheat - which can be planted later than rapeseed, with some southern countries in the early stages of sowings - were set to rise by some 500,000 hectares, holding out the potential for a 36 million-tonne crop, the broker said

 

Seedings were set to rise in countries including France, the EU's top wheat producer, where total soft wheat area is likely to top 5 million hectares, Spain and the UK.

 

The dip in rapeseed plantings comes despite a tightening European balance sheet for the oilseed which has driven prices of the grain one-third higher in Paris this year.

 

The region's rapeseed production has fallen behind consumption, boosted by biofuels use, in seven of the last eight years, fostering a jump in imports and a forecast dip in stocks to 1.1 million tonnes over 2010-11 - equivalent to less than three weeks of consumption.

 

However, the rise in rapeseed prices pales against that of wheat, which has risen by some two-thirds in Paris this year, with most of that increase coming since June, when news of weak crops in Canada and Russia hit the market.

 

Some of the lost rapeseed area is likely to be made up in sunflower seed sowings, Strategie Grains added.