Disasters hit harvest in Europe

NATURAL disasters continue to affect the European grain market, with droughts in Spain and Portugal continuing to drive demand, and destructive torrential rains and floods reducing Bulgaria’s surplus for export.

Bad weather is also hitting the Romanian barley harvest. Up to this week, the Irish grain harvest had luckily escaped bad weather; if grain requires drying, the hike in prices for diesel could leave growers losing heavily. However, high winds and broken weather were feared by grain growers here this week.

Meanwhile, the Bulgarian government said nearly 70,000 hectares of farmland have been completely devastated by flooding.

Feed wheat from Hungary for just €75 per tonne has been dragging down early EU harvest prices. Another development early this week which looks like affecting prices in the UK and Ireland was the downgrading of some French malting barley to feed standard.