EU-27 & UK: Ongoing dryness makes analysts reduce barley crop forecast

After generally good progress in crop’25 planting, the tone is drifting toward the need for further moisture, as scattered rain has missed several key regions across France and the UK. This on-going dryness in key areas has led the RMI Analytics experts to reduce the EU-27 & UK barley crop’25 forecast by 0.5 mln to 57.8 mln tonnes.

Dryness in Ukraine has reduced production forecast to 5.3 mln tonnes (-0.3 mln); while Russia’s crop forecast is unchanged at 18.5 mln tonnes, as spring barley planted area is expected to be maintained.

Europe’s 2025 barley crops got off to a generally good start as warm and dry conditions helped achieve good planting progress. However, the lack of rain since seeding is starting to show up in early stress on emerging crops and also slowing the development of winter crops. However, there still remains plenty of time, and one significant rain event in drier areas would dramatically improve the crop prospects. The analysts also continue to lower industrial (malting) demand for malting barley.