EU & UK: Barley crop planting conditions remain less than ideal across western Europe

While a weather break allowed France barley planting to finish, conditions across western Europe remain less than ideal, RMI Analytics said in their early May report.

Parts of Western Europe continue to struggle with cool and wet conditions (e.g. Ireland, Scotland) but some progress is being reported (e.g. Denmark). Crop development is behind normal and ratings show the impact: French winter barley is 66% good/excellent (91% in 2023); spring barley 74% (94% last year). It remains early and the analysts’ estimate is unchanged at 59.6 mln tonnes for the EU+UK barley crop this year.

Western Europe’s crop is late and news from Russia highlights very dry conditions in the southern regions and frost events, which leads to reduced crop expectations by 0.7 mln tonnes to 19.8 mln.

E-malt.com, the global information source for the brewing and malting industry professionals. The bi-weekly E-malt.com Newsletters feature latest industry news, statistics in graphs and tables, world barley and malt prices, and other relevant information. Click here to get full access to E-malt.com. If you are a Castle Malting client, you can get free access to E-malt.com website and publications. Contact us for more information at marketing@castlemalting.com .