Weather dents German rapeseed, wheat plantings as area shrinks 3.6%

The area sown for the 2017/18 harvest of wheat and rapeseed is likely to shrink by around 3.6% on average as bad weather plays havoc with German farmers’ planting, data from the German government statistics service Destatis has shown.

Winter wheat area has declined 4.7% to 2.98 million ha, from 3.1 million ha in the 2016/17 season , while the winter rapeseed crop has fallen 2.6% to 1.2 million ha,

according to the data which was released Thursday.

Overall, 120,900 ha has been lost across all winter cereals some 2% on average, with wheat – “the most important cereal crop in Germany” the report notes – losing 147,000 ha.

The overall figure reflects some gains in area achieved by other cereal crops.

According to EU data, Germany is expected to produce 24.5 million mt of wheat in 2017, second only to France that grew 39.6 million mt.

The rapeseed crop in 2017 is expected to be 4.2 million mt, the lowest crop since 2011 according to Eurostat.

Changing biofuel patterns

Some 30% of Germany’s rapeseed crop is used in the production of biodiesel, according to the Association of the German Biofuels Industry, with production in 2016 reaching 2.6 million mt of rapeseed-based biodiesel.

However, there are questions over the greenhouse gas savings of using rapeseed-derived biodiesel, and Europe has set out to tackle concerns over the use of crops in the energy mix, preferring instead to focus and develop biofuels from wastes.