The wheat harvest in Romania next season may exceed 10 million tons

Argus Agritel’s agricultural analytics division predicts that Romania will harvest 10.09 to 11.15 mln tonnes of wheat in 2024/2025 season.

The gross wheat harvest is expected to exceed 10 mln tonnes for the sixth time in the last eight years. At the same time, the expansion of planted areas will compensate for the less favorable yield forecast for the next season.

Romanian farmers are planning to plant more winter crops, including wheat and barley, to avoid a repeat of previous years when drought in spring and summer negatively affected spring crops.

Wheat planted area is forecast at 2.30 million hectares, which is significantly higher than the average for the previous five years of 2.18 million hectares.

The yield, according to the first published forecast of Argus Agritel, will be 46.2 c/ha, which is approximately the same as in the current season. The forecast assumes that precipitation will be higher in winter and next year.

The dry weather during the sowing period stopped the development of winter crops, but there is still time for their recovery, as it was in the 2018-2019 season, when similar conditions eventually allowed to harvest more than 10 mln tons of crops.

The best condition of winter crops is in the west of the country, where heavy precipitation allowed wheat to develop to the 2-3 leaf and tillering stage. Rapeseed and barley crops in the west are also in good condition.

In southern and southeastern Romania, weather conditions were not as favorable, with less than half of the crops in the germination phase as of the last week of November. Farmers are also slower to cover their fertilizer needs for the upcoming season.

Overall, this year’s drier weather is likely to hit rapeseed production more than wheat. Some farmers are planning to re-sow rapeseed in the spring, as most of the winter crops have not sprouted.

Romania is among several EU countries affected by unfavorable weather conditions. Bulgaria experienced severe drought, while excessive rainfall caused problems in some parts of France, northern Germany, Denmark and western Poland.

Tags: wheat, crop forecast, Romania