The high heat combined with the drought will hurt the cereals. According to Philippe Heusele, secretary general of the AGPB, the General Association of Producers of Wheat and other cereals, yield losses will worsen. “We can imagine losses of around 10 to 15%” on cultures in France, he explains this Wednesday on franceinfo.
Ears that fill less
“Our crops are at the grain-filling stage, explains this farmer from Seine-et-Marne, the plants are literally in the process of forming them and when it is very hot, what is more on dry soil, the filling is bad”. Very concretely, according to Philippe Heusele, “instead of having for example on an ear of wheat, 50 grains of a normal weight, we will perhaps have 40 and more puny grains”.
A situation aggravated by the drought. “The wetter the soil, the more the plant resists”, he explains. However, on very dry ground“losses can be around 30% on a final yield”. “On one hectare of crop, which in a normal year produces 7.5 tons, or will go down to 6.5 tons or even less”. At the beginning of May, the Ministry of Agriculture was already pointing out the difficulties that wheat and barley producers were going to encounter, particularly with the drought.
Few consequences for French consumers
But according to the professional, the consequences for the French consumer will be less. “It is above all our export customers who will suffer from this lack of production because France is a major supplier to countries south of the Mediterranean”explains Philippe Heusele. “The war in Ukraine in this context, does not help matters”, he adds. “For the consumer, on the other hand, there will be relatively few consequences in the end because we are lucky in France to have sufficient production, even in these complicated years”.