France: Sun-dried French Fields

Drought is biting crops in France, the European Union’s top grain grower, a worry which has helped to fuel a rally in global wheat prices despite a commodity sell-off sparked by economic doubts. The French environment minister has said France is in “a situation of crisis” and has imposed curbs on water consumption in a third of the country’s administrative departments.

French grain farmer Pascal Seingier pulls a wheat stalk from the cracked soil in his field and points to the browned stem and dried-out roots. “It’s all dry. We have had almost no rain in weeks and it’s now clear I will not have the same harvest as usual”, he says. “Usually Mother Nature repairs what it has broken but it won’t happen this year.” Seingier, 54, who owns 125 hectares some 55 kilometres east of Paris, checks his rain gauge every morning at 8 o’clock and writes the daily rainfall on a piece of paper.

The instrument barely got wet this year, he shows – only 25 days out of 140, with just 10 millimetres in April and May. “Since mid-January the rainfall has been below normal. April was one of the hottest and driest on record and so far in May I have registered only 3 ml of rain”, Seingier said at his farm which dates from 1860. “Usually it’s 50-60 (ml) a month.”

France is by far the EU’s largest wheat grower and exporter, and the Ile-de-France region surrounding Paris, where Seingier lives, is among the country’s top 10 wheat providers. Over 85% of the wheat crop has already suffered from a lack of water, including northern France’s grain belt, according to grains technical institute Arvalis. The hot and dry weather has advanced plant development to levels normally expected in summer; with more sun and heat to come, farmers can only wait and see the extent of the damage. “What we need is cloudy, wet weather until harvest – and it does not look like this will happen”, Seingier said.

 Meteo France forecaster Michel Daloz was not optimistic for crops, saying she expected temperatures to rise sharply over the weekend accelerating groundwater evaporation. “We would really need a miracle to hope to make up for some of the deficit.”

 Parts of central Europe had under 40% of their long-term average rainfall between February and April. The current drought in much of Europe looks set to continue with little relief until June at the earliest, forecasters say. Droughtdamage in France combined with weather worries in other regions in Europe and the United States have made prices soar in the past weeks with a steep rise since early May. EU new crop wheat futures have gained 34% since mid-March (22% over the past two weeks alone), hitting a new contract high on Thursday. Fears of scorched harvests have also boosted other grains such as rapeseed and malting barley.

 The rise in prices could help compensate for growers’ output losses, but only partly. “I have already committed most of my harvest at 154 euros a tonne”, said Vincent Boddaert, 34, who grows 240 hectares of land near Steingier’s farm in the Seine-et-Marne department. “I had sold 4 lots (of 50 tonnes) on Euronext but then bought them back. I made a loss but I think it’s going to rise much higher. I don’t believe crops are going to recover”, he said, looking across his parched wheat field.