November 12, 2007

 

Hungary's 2007 corn crop down by 4 million tonnes

 

 

Hungary's corn crop is expected to be less than half last year's due to poor weather in 2007, a farm ministry official said Friday (November 9).

 

With the corn crop harvest completed on 90 percent of the sowing area, the farm ministry estimates that this year's crop will total 3.97 million tonnes, down sharply from last year's bumper crop of 8.42 million tonnes, state secretary at the ministry, Fulop Benedek said at a press conference.

 

Corn was harvested on a total area of 1.06 million hectares with an average yield of 3.77 tonnes a hectare, the ministry said. Last year, corn was harvested on 1.2 million hectares with an average yield of 7.01 tonnes a hectare.

 

Seeing as the corn harvest is nearly complete and the grain harvest is over, the ministry put this year's total grain harvest at 9.65 million tonnes, down from 14.72 million tonnes last year.

 

Of this year's total, autumn wheat was also down on year due to the summer drought and spring frost. The wheat harvest totalled 4.01 million tonnes in 2007, down from 4.4 million last year.

 

Autumn wheat is planned to be sown on 1.14 million hectares, about 3 percent or 30,000 hectares more than last year. About 90 percent of the planting has been completed.

 

"The outlook for wheat is good. The significant rainfall that we've seen recently will improve the development chances of the seedlings and is a good base for next year," Benedek said.

 

Video >

Follow Us

FacebookTwitterLinkedIn