Early EU Harvesting

My newest chum Joachim reports to me that early harvested barley in Hungary has been showing disappointing results with specific weights of around 57-58kg/hl, with better samples above 60kg/hl hard to find at the moment.

Higher testing parcels are asking EUR95/tonne ex farm, but finding few takers amongst Italian buyers who prefer to wait for what will likely be better quality new crop barley to come out of France and German in the next week or two, he says. Early harvested barley samples in Austria are also seeing poor quality, he adds.

The Hungarian Agricultural Ministry today said that the country will harvest 4.53 MMT of wheat this season, that's a little better than last year, but flooding is casting a question mark over quality, they added.

Further east, early harvesting in Russia is taking place due to drought stress, rather than advanced crops, according to this report on the excellent Agrimoney.com.

Whilst that report seems to suggest that Kazakh crops may escape too many drought problems, I'm not so sure based on other reports I am reading. We are waiting to hear what Ukraine agronomist Mike Lee's mate, "Stan" in Kazakhstan has to say, since he reported on some pretty dire weather conditions earlier in the month.

In Ukraine though, winter heat is "turning and generally looks good, weed and disease levels are low," reports Mike. You can read more of Mike's stuff and check out a few of his pictures here.