Continued heavy weekend rains again disrupted Hungary's wheat harvest, already battered by weeks of wet weather, and added to worries about quality, the Agriculture Ministry and farmers said on Monday. Up to 40 millimetres of rain at the weekend meant harvesting covered only an extra 1-2 percent of the 1.132 million hectares sown, the ministry said, though traders said the pace could pick up this week as hot, dry weather was forecast for Hungary.
"It is going to be very difficult. Combines still cannot enter the fields," Jozsef Vancsura, president of the Association of Hungarian Grain Producers and head of a farm in Bacs-Kiskun county, southern Hungary, told Reuters.
The ministry said on Friday that Hungary's grain crop would be up to 1.5 million tonnes less than expected and that wheat quality was questionable due to the rain.
"Farmers are very impatient because quality is deteriorating," Vancsura said.
The ministry said on Monday that around two-thirds of the wheat harvested so far was of milling quality, but it warned again that quality could drop in many places because of the rain, state news agency MTI reported.
Gluten content and falling numbers, an indicator of bread-making quality, could drop, the ministry and farmers said.
"In the early harvest it may be two-thirds (milling wheat), but it will soon be half and we shall see how it ends," Vancsura said.
The Hungarian Meteorological Service forecast more showers for Monday, but a spell of very hot and dry weather was seen arriving later this week.
"The bulk of the (harvesting) work will certainly start in the coming days," Robert Vajo, dealer at trading firm Agrokont, said.
"It is hard to tell how much damage a week of deluge has caused," he added.