HAMBURG, May 4 (Reuters) – The European Union’s rapeseed harvest will fall this summer after frost hit crops in Poland while insect damage is causing concern in France and Britain, experts said on Wednesday.
“A smaller 2016 crop would raise EU import demand from Ukraine, Australia and Canada,” a trader said. “Ukraine’s crop is also looking small so supplies will be harder to find.”
Analysts estimate the EU 2016 crop of rapeseed, used for edible oil and biodiesel production, at between 21.2 and 21.4 million tonnes, down from 22 million tonnes last year.
In France, set to be the EU’s largest producer this summer, rapeseed is generally in reasonable condition and serious damage from frost last week is not expected, but significant presence of insects and fungus could limit yields.
“There have been problems with flea beetles, with some fields badly damaged after favourable weather for the insects earlier in the season,” said ODA Groupe analyst Antoine Liagre.
ODA has cut its forecast of France’s 2016 crop to 5.2 million tonnes from 5.4 million following expected insect damage. France harvested 5.3 million tonnes last year.
Germany’s rapeseed crop is expected to increase 0.6 percent on the year to 5.03 million tonnes, German farm cooperatives estimate.
“Frosts in the past couple of weeks were not serious and rapeseed is now blooming,” a German trader said. “I was in the Weserbergland region in north Germany and there are hardly any dark gaps in the flowers, which is the usual sign of frost damage.”
Third largest producer Britain looks set to harvest a smaller crop this year as farmers sowed less while yields appear unlikely to match last year’s high levels.
“We are expecting a return to more normal yields,” said analyst Jack Watts of Britain’s Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board.
Analysts expect UK rapeseed area will be down around 10 percent this season, hurt by weak margins and problems with cabbage stem flea beetles linked to EU restrictions on insecticides known as neonicotinoids.
Britain’s National Farmers Union on Wednesday applied for emergency use of neonicotinoid seed treatments.
But deep early-winter frosts in fourth largest producer Poland means the Polish crop will fall 22 percent on 2015 to only 2.45-2.50 million tonnes, estimates Wojtek Sabaranski of Sparks Polska.
Frosts in late April added to damage earlier in the winter, he said.
“Locally, this has further affected the condition of winter rapeseeds as in some regions they were already flowering,” Sabaranski said.
