Good weather gets credit | Crop to be 74 million tonnes, up from 64.5 million tonnes last year
HAMBURG, Germany (Reuters) — The European Union is in the final stages of gathering a larger-than-expected corn harvest, with good weather helping crop development in most top producing countries.
“The harvest will mean a good market supply of maize for animal feed, ethanol and food maize,” said Claus Keller of German commodity analysts FO Licht. “It will also reduce the EU’s import requirement for maize in the next year.”
The EU is likely to gather a bumper harvest of almost 74 million tonnes of grain corn this year, up from 64.5 million tonnes last year, Keller estimated. This was up from forecasts of 70.4 million tonnes in September.
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“This is one of the best EU harvests of all time following favourable weather in the summer,” Keller said.
The larger EU crop could be bad news for corn exporters to Europe, including Ukraine, he said.
The quality picture is still mixed, with repeated rain in some areas creating mycotoxins, ADM Germany warned.
The harvest is in full swing in France, the EU’s largest corn producer, and results have reinforced expectations of a record crop.
French growers and brokers expect the grain corn crop to top 17 million tonnes for the first time, with trade consensus at around 17.5 million tonnes compared to 14.7 million tonnes harvested last year.
However, there is concern about crop quality in eastern France, where summer rain, which boosted yield potential, has caused mycotoxins to develop.
“The excess moisture during the summer led to the presence of micro-fungus that damaged plant ears,” a cash broker said of the Rhine and Rhone valley corn belts in eastern France.
“In quality terms, it is day and night between the southwest and the east, and some starch makers are already turning towards Atlantic coast markets to ensure they get good-quality grain.”
French farm agency FranceAgriMer estimated that 38 percent of France’s grain corn crop was cut by Oct. 20, and brokers said the harvest has now reached its halfway point.
Keller estimated that Romania will harvest 10.8 million tonnes, up from 10.6 million tonnes last year, Hungary will harvest a bumper 8.9 million tonnes, up from 6.6 million tonnes, and Italy 8.1 million tonnes, up from 7.6 million.
In Italy, yields are forecast to increase 25.1 percent on the year to 4.45 tonnes per acre this year as harvesting moves into its final stages, said Rome-based crop research agency ISMEA.
Optimal weather, notably frequent rainfall and cool temperatures during the summer in Italy, contributed to the increased production and yield outlook, it said.
Germany’s crop is expected to jump to 5.3 million tonnes from 4.4 million tonnes, FO Licht estimated.
Eighty percent of Germany’s corn has now been harvested with autumn weather favourable, a German analyst said.
However, in Poland, the crop is likely to fall to 3.7 million tonnes from 3.8 million tonnes last year, said Wojtek Sabaranski of Sparks Polska.
