Wet weather means less food this year

The harvest was smaller this year due to heavy rains, but prices have long been falling.

Vienna. At the end of June, the last rapeseed fields in Austria lost their color, while sunflower fields began to bloom and wheat stood tall. The latter can already be used to make preliminary predictions about the current grain harvest.

The Austrian Chamber of Agriculture (LKÖ) expects this year’s grain harvest to be almost 3 million tonnes, 5.4% less than the previous year. According to LKÖ, the reason is, on the one hand, the frosts in January and February, especially for the spring barley planted in autumn. Excessive rain in autumn also means that many fields are wet for too long, which means that farmers cannot go to the fields, otherwise they would compact the soil too much. In 2024, the area under grain cultivation will be 507,000 hectares, a decrease of 2.5%.

Price Fluctuations

LKÖ president says sharp fluctuations in world markets continue to cause tensions Josef Moosbrugger. In addition, expensive and sometimes no longer permitted crop protection products (neonicotinoid insecticides) put pressure on farmers, according to Musbrugger. When it comes to price fluctuations, Franz Sinabell, agricultural economist at Wifo, told Presse that they are challenging but also “not uncommon”. However, he also understands the concerns about high prices and bans of certain crop protection products: “In recent years, some crop protection products have been withdrawn from the shelves, of course with the loss of production.”

Moosbrugger appealed to them again. European UnionShe must think about how to deal with the problem of cheap grain exports from Ukraine in the long term. The representative said that this is because of different standards and different cost structures, while he also stressed the need to pay more and more attention to the marketing of domestic agricultural products. This year, the AMA quality mark was expanded for the first time to include cereal products such as flour, bread and baked goods. The main purpose of this is to be able to sell more products domestically and thus reduce dependence on global markets.

Sinabel also sees the fact that stock exchange prices are currently under pressure. However, he does not believe that Ukrainian exports are responsible for this. “Price expectations on European stock exchanges are currently more than ten percent lower than a month ago. This is not a good situation for farmers shortly before the harvest, because it means that a good harvest is expected worldwide. A single country does not have such a big impact,” Sinabel said. The EU also supports measures to ensure that Ukrainian grain is sold outside Europe.

This year, local farmers also responded to price fluctuations by adjusting production. In absolute terms, the area of ​​grain maize suffered the largest loss, down 5.9% (over 12,400 hectares). Farmer representatives used the low prices of maize in the previous season to justify this. The unattractive prices also led to a reduction in rye planting (minus 16.3%).

Add beets again

This year’s area champions are pumpkins (up 16.2% to 33,700 hectares) and potatoes (up 6.9% to about 20,000 hectares), as well as sugar beets, which were difficult to grow a few years ago. Agrana Due to the decreasing amount of arable land in Austria, the Leopoldsdorf sugar factory was even threatened with closure, but this situation still exists.

Environment minister’s actions continue to be criticised Leonor Gewessler (Green Party) approved the EU reversion regulation last week. Even at the time, Moosbrugger considered the regulation “completely absurd”. He was concerned that too much work could be transferred to farmers.

But not all farmers are against the regulation. Small farmers in particular support the proposed law. “There are different opinions,” says Moosbrugger. The LKÖ advocates nature protection, but this should reduce bureaucratic efforts. Moreover, former agriculture minister Nikolaus Berlakovich, now president of Burgenland, says: “As a farmer, I don’t need a regeneration law to have flood zones.” What remains, they say, is uncertainty about the specific design. Easy-to-implement norms are needed. Otherwise, it will be even more rare to find successors on local farms.