Wet French harvest causes quality issues

As torrential rain continues to batter many parts of Europe this summer, winter and spring crop conditions in France, the European Union’s biggest grain exporter, are tumbling rapidly. The word catastrophic has been rolled out in the past week to describe this year’s harvest, with crop ratings at an eight-year low and farmers potentially facing the worst production outlook in at least 10 years. Last week’s crop update from FranceAgriMer rated the French soft wheat crop at just 50 percent good-to-excellent. This is inferior to conditions at the same point in 2020, another harvest dogged by heavy rain, and the worst since 2016, when France reaped its smallest wheat crop since the 1980s. While the rating was unchanged from a week earlier, it is down from 78pc at the same time last year. As of 29 July, the durum wheat crop was rated 58pc good-to-excellent, compared to 67pc a year earlier. At the beginning of last week, the winter and spring barley crops were rated 53pc and 66pc ...