Freezing temperatures coupled with a lack of snow cover in some parts of eastern Europe have badly damaged winter sowings and will lower 2012 grain crops, farmers and meteorologists said. A cold snap in early February, when temperatures plunged to minus 30 degrees Celsius, has damaged 40 percent of winter grain crops in major Black Sea producer Ukraine and is posing risks to sowings in smaller grain exporter Bulgaria as well as in the Czech Republic.
Sufficient snow cover is protecting plantings in most of Poland, the European Union's fourth largest wheat producer, as well as the wheat and barley fields in Hungary, Romania and Serbia, but extensive cold is raising concerns, officials said. The frost impact can be estimated at the end of March at the earliest, when the plants start to develop in warmer weather, but farmers and grain analysts say that most of the wasted crops can be replanted with spring sowings. Grains can survive frosts as deep as minus 20 degrees centigrade if they have protective snow to insulate them.
Cold weather is raising worries over damage to grain plantings in western Europe too, though crops there could still come through the freezing temperatures unscathed. Record frosts following a severe drought in the autumn have damaged Ukrainian winter grain crops in the eastern and southern parts of the country, Tetyana Adamenko, head of the agricultural department of Ukraine's meteorological service said on Thursday.
"The situation is worsening. Despite some snowfall in eastern and southern Ukraine, these levels are not enough to protect crops from the record frost," she said. Ukraine's harvest of winter grains could fall by 42-58 percent to between 10 and 14 million tonnes due to poor weather during sowing and wintering, Adamenko has said. In Bulgaria, winter sowings that were first hit by extensive drought were exposed to deep frosts as strong winds have blown away the snow blankets in the north-eastern part of the country, while icy rains have flooded part of the sowings in the south.
"The grain harvest will be lower than in 2011. First the drought, now the frost and the floods. The picture is mixed but there is significant damage, especially with the rapeseed," said Radoslav Hristov, deputy head of the National Association of Grain Producers. Bulgaria harvested 4.3 million tonnes of wheat last year, 670,000 tonnes of barley and 515,000 tonnes of rapeseed.
The lack of protective snow in the grain productive areas in the Czech Republic is endangering the crops. "I can say with a 100 percent certainty that the harvest this year will not be at the same level as last year," said Juri Snejdrla vice president of Czech Agrarian Chamber.
Czech farmers harvested 8.2 million tonnes of grains last year, up 20 percent from a year earlier. In Poland, much of the country was covered with snow, but extensive cold is raising concerns for the conditions of wheat and rapeseed. "With grains the situation should not be very bad as a large part of the country is covered by snow," Wieslaw Lopaciuk, analyst at state institute IERiGZ, said.