French Wheat Harvest and Yields Seen Plunging as Troubles Deepen

France’s soft-wheat harvest is seen plunging to the lowest in 40 years, and the nation’s farm lobby is warning of “structural” damage to yields.

Production will be 25.98 million tons, a 26% decline from last year, said Eric Thirouin, president of AGPB. Yields slumped 17% to 6.2 tons per hectare during the same period, continuing the slide that started in 2015.

“This trend suggests for us farmers a much deeper and structural fall that we have been experiencing for years and which does not spell out its name: that of a real destruction of French agriculture,” Thirouin said. “This is my first cry of alarm.”

Farmers are set to lose €3 billion ($3.3 billion) in earnings compared with last year as the plummeting production coincides with rising energy bills and salaries, he said.

Grain exports from the European Union’s top agricultural producer are seen dropping to the lowest since 2001-2002. Ceaseless rains, a lack of sunshine and low temperatures favoring diseases curtailed yields and affected the quality of crops in most growing regions.

Weather extremes hit grains this season across the continent.

Earlier this year, farmers led street demonstrations highlighting rising costs, cheap imports and stringent French and EU regulations such as the bloc’s Green Deal. Exports also are being crimped by competition from Russia and Ukraine, Thirouin said.

“We have more and more regulations, restrictions and bans that have been raining down on all of us farmers continuously for more than 20 years and which, as a result, weaken our means of production,” he said.

The French government made a series of concessions and announced more than €2.2 billion in assistance to get the farmers to end their protests.

Farmers’ groups are holding talks with the government to press for urgent financial support and to help ease restrictions, Thirouin said. Those negotiations have been difficult given the country’s ongoing political crisis.

Asked if farmers may return to street protests, he said: “When you are ready to throw in the towel, you are ready for anything and everything.”

Tags: wheat, crop forecast, France