“The fallout from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continues to impact global commodity markets and pose a major threat to global food security”, warns the European Commission in its short-term forecast for agricultural markets, published on Thursday 7 July.
World agricultural prices have risen by 30% since the beginning of the invasion, although there has been some “easing in recent weeks, partly linked to the arrival of the next harvest”, the Commission reports.
It recalls that with the start of the new grain harvest in Ukraine and the rest of Europe, “uncertainty remains about the ability of Ukrainian farmers to store and export their 2022 crop properly”. There are also questions about the ability of Ukrainian farmers to secure their 2023 harvest, even on a reduced area.
For the EU, the Commission expects cereal production to fall by 2.5% in 2022 (to 286.4 million tonnes).
The derogation to allow the production of any crop for food and feed on fallow land, granted in March by the Commission, has led to an increase in the area sown to protein crops for 2022/23. The projected increase in area is 6% (2.2 million hectares) for protein crops year-on-year. Thanks to the increase in production, European protein crop exports are expected to rise by 19% compared to last year. Farmers have also used this derogation to plant sunflowers. The estimated sunflower area thus reached 4.7 million hectares, an increase of 7.8% year-on-year. This season, European sunflower seed production is expected to reach a record level of 11.1 million tonnes (+7.8%).
Link to the short-term outlook: https://aeur.eu/f/2j2 (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)