December 19, 2007

Sweet corn harvest to grow 20 percent in France

France's corn crop could hit 15.5 million tonnes this year, a 20-percent increase from last year thanks to favourable weather and a transfer of land intended for feed corn into land to grow food corn, a growers union said.

AGMP, the largest maize growers union in the country, estimated the corn crop based on a record average yield of 9.95 tonnes per hectare.

France's food corn crop hit 12.8 million tonnes last year, with yields at 9.0 tonnes per hectare, farm ministry data showed.

Up to 1.2 million tonnes of food corn or nearly 8 percent of the total would have come from the 100,000 hectares of land initially intended for fodder.

Feed corn silos have been well filled, allowing part of the sown area to be harvested as food corn and sold on the market where prices were high, AGPM said in its latest monthly report.

Europe's wet summer weather, while disastrous for wheat, led to a thriving corn harvest.