EU cereal harvest fares slightly better than expected, say groups

Europe’s cereal harvest for the year has fared marginally better than expected, though with huge variance between crops, leading agri-food groups have said.

The farmer representative group Copa-Cogeca’s latest EU-27 cereals estimates for 2012-13 and 2013-14 show that, despite bad weather conditions, many crops performed better than expected. Nonetheless, with food demand on the rise, the group says that urgent measures are needed under the new Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in 2014 to enable the EU to make full use of its production potential, according to Copa-Cogeca’s cereals and oilseeds working party chairman, Max Shulman.

“Our latest cereal harvest estimates show production was quite stable this year, reaching 284mt whilst EU-27 oilseeds production totalled 27.99mt, a slight drop of 3.2% on last year’s levels,” Mr Shulman said.