1 July 2022 - Stratégie Grains, a Feedinfo sister publication which provides specialist analysis and market forecasts for agricultural commodities, recently conducted a 1,500 km crop tour to assess yield potentials of French soft wheat by counting wheat ears and recording observations.
This year, the team of experts were present in key grain areas of France, covering the regions of Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, Centre-Val de Loire, northern Nouvelle-Aquitaine and the south of Pays de la Loire. The tour took place on 20-23 June 2022.
Full details of the crop tour are available to subscribers of Stratégie Grains. However, Benoît Fayaud - Grain and Crop Analyst - was able to give us a glimpse of some of his team’s findings which come just before the harvest when grains are well formed and can be precisely counted.
The first conclusion from the crop tour that could be drawn was that yields in the regions surveyed this year are in general expected to be lower than in 2021, in line with expectations.
Fayaud mentioned that a second soft wheat crop tour session is currently underway in the northern regions Normandy, Hauts-de-France and the Grand Est.
“Each year we do the same transect [a line following a route along which a survey or observations are made] in the major French production areas. We stop in wheat fields on a regular basis and count the number of grains per square meter thanks to hoops,” Fayaud explained.
Fayaud added: “In our experience, the crop tour gives always precious information about the yield potentials of the crop. Of course, the results are not always close to the final yield. But it gives the direction whether the yield will be higher or lower than the average.”
Asked if the extreme weather events noticed in June in many parts of France (hailstorms, high temperatures, rain…), impact estimations, Fayaud replied: “The aim of doing the crop tour just before the harvest is to consider the most weather events possible. The main risk is that the harvest is delayed after the crop tour because of rains. If so, we can take this into account by being more conservative on our yield estimate and by being more pessimistic regarding grain quality,” he added.
On the issue of grain quality, Stratégie Grains provides some qualitative data on soft wheat by estimating the share of milling/feed wheat for each EU country. This input is obtained from exchanges with local market contacts and from data of leading organisations such as FranceAgriMer in France and the Max Rubner-Institut in Germany, who can disclose information about test weight, Hagberg falling numbers [a term that is used to give an indication of the enzyme activity in flour] and protein content of the grains.
The same methodology Stratégie Grains applies to soft wheat could be used for other ear cereals (barley, durum wheat). However, for other crops such as rapeseed or sunflower another methodology should be used. Asked if the methodology could be potentially replicated in other EU countries, Fayaud argued in theory, yes, but ultimately depends on whether or not fields are accessible (i.e. absence of fences or other natural obstacles).
However, Fayaud stressed that the process is very time-consuming process, hence why Stratégie Grains choses to focus on key crops in key countries. “Getting feedback from contacts remain the strongest tool to assess the yield potential of the crops,” he commented. “That being said, the crop tour enables us to have a couple of days, sometimes a couple of weeks advance on our contacts.”
Stratégie Grains offers a clear and impartial picture of global agricultural commodity markets; including in-depth consumption data of raw materials used in animal feed production, global livestock numbers and meat production.
