Grain plantings in Poland, the EU’s third-largest producer behind France and Germany, rose by 2.7 percent this year to about 7.6 million hectares (18.8 million acres), the Warsaw-based Central Statistical Office said. In its spring estimate of crop conditions, the office said rapeseed plantings had decreased 26 percent from a year earlier to about 600,000 hectares, according to a survey carried out in the first 10 days of May.
Sugar beet plantings were unchanged from a year earlier at about 203,500 hectares. The winter wheat crop was graded 3.2 on the office’s five- point scale, in which 3 is an “adequate” rating and 4 is “good.” That compares with a 3.5 grade last year. The statistics office rated this year’s rapeseed crop at 3.1, up from 2.9 a year ago.
Winter kill totaled 24.6 percent of all grain plantings, 32.4 percent of winter wheat and 32.2 percent of rapeseed, the statistics office said. As a result, the sown area for winter grain fell 21.2 percent, while spring grain plantings jumped 39.8 percent to more than 4 million hectares, the office estimated.
Poland’s grain crop may fall below 25 million metric tons this year from 26.6 million tons in 2011 due to damage to the winter wheat crop, the Warsaw-based Institute for Agricultural Economics and Food Economy said in a report published on May 14.