France: Spring barley planting still stalled due to wet weather

Wet weather has stalled spring barley planting in France, posing early risks to production in the EU’s top barley exporter, AHDB reported on March 8.

By 4 March, just 28% of the 2024 French spring barley crop was in the ground. This is virtually unchanged from a week earlier (27% complete) and well behind the average for the time of year of 71% complete.

There has been some drier weather in the past few days, so there’s been potential for some more progress to be made, depending on soil conditions. However, the forecast looks wetter over the weekend and into next week, which could again interrupt planting.

From 2019 to 2023, just under 30% of the French crop was spring sown (French Ag Ministry). In 2023 the French spring barley area was particularly low and a rebound in the area is expected.

Despite a potential recovery in spring plantings, French barley output is still expected to be lower in 2024 than 2023. The winter barley crop has got off to a challenging start with the area down 7% (French Ag Ministry) and crop conditions much poorer than last year. By 4 March, FranceAgriMer estimated 69% of the crop was in a good or very good condition, down 1% from a week earlier and sharply below last year’s 92%.

Later planted crops can often suffer a yield penalty, or there’s the potential for the area to shrink further, either of which could further curb French barley production in 2024. We need to continue to watch conditions and planting progress to understand the potential picture.

At a total barley level, the impact of a smaller crop is likely to be offset by heavy carry-over stocks. At 2.11 Mt the current forecast for French stocks at the end of 2023/24 is double the level at the end of 2022/23 and the largest since 2009/10 (FranceAgriMer).

However, spring crops across Europe are important to malting barley availability. The difficult 2023 harvests squeezed malting barley availability in Europe, and supported prices, including in the UK. The size and quality of the 2024 barley crops cross Europe will have a large bearing on feed barley’s price relationship to wheat, and malting premiums.

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