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The German Ag Ministry say that this season's grain crop is likely to be 43.8 MMT, down 12% on lst season.

All wheat production is seen at 23.92 MMT; barley output will consist of 8.66 MMT of winter barley and 1.76 MMT of spring varieties; corn production is expected at 3.64 MMT; the rye harvest will decline to 2.84 MMT; OSR output will be 5.7 MMT.

All those numbers are down on last season's bumper production, but in most cases they're not as low as some other estimates have been.

They played down the need for imports of high end quality wheat, saying that the country should be sell-sufficient in such grades despite the highly publicised purchase of 20,000 MT of hard wheat from the US this week.

They did however concede that exports would be significantly reduced in 2010/11.