Spanish farmers have planted 1.0 percent less land to winter cereals in the 2010/11 campaign than a year earlier, a crop progress report from the Agriculture Ministry showed on Wednesday. The data bucked predictions that farmers in the major grain importing country would plant more to take advantage of soaring prices, but analysts noted the figures garnered by the end of December were preliminary.
Farmers are not expected to declare until mid-April how much they have sown in order to request aid under the Common Agricultural Policy. "The estimates our regional organisations are giving us are that final figures will be very similar to last year, or slightly up," said Jose Carlos Caballero, a crop technician at the 200,000-strong Asaja farmers' union.
The Ministry estimated a total 5.496 million hectares had been sown to winter cereals, mainly barley and wheat. For the first time in the current campaign, the data included two-row barley, the biggest single item in the official tally. Average wheat prices in Spain have risen by 69 percent since the July harvest last year, according to merchants' association Accoe, and barley by 81 percent.
Farmers say weather so far in the current campign has been suitable for crop development, but note that April and May in drought-prone Spain are the months which either make or break the final wheat and barley harvest. Cereal harvests in Spain have varied in recent years between 13 million and 23 million tonnes. Even with a bumper cereal crop, Spain has a massive structural shortfall and will need to import an estimated 11 million tonnes in the 2010/11 market year, a market which draws interest from Argentina to Kazakhstan.
Comments
Comments are closed for this article.