PARIS/HAMBURG: Relentless heat and drought could halve this year’s French maize harvest and reduce European Union production to its smallest in decades, analysts said, despite expectations that crops in Poland and Romania will hold up better.
The European Commission in late July cut its forecast for the 2026/27 EU maize (corn) harvest to 51.9 million metric tons, the lowest since 2007. But some analysts now expect output to fall below 50 million tons for the first time since the 1990s.
“Agronomically speaking, the (maize) situation in the EU is very bad,” Expana analyst Gabriel Antonio said, adding the poor harvest outlook was set to raise EU imports sharply.
Weather has exacerbated the impact of lower planting, partly linked to fertilizer and energy costs.
In France, the agriculture ministry projects the maize crop will drop 35 percent from last year to 9 million tons. But Expana and Argus both expect output to fall by about half to less than 7 million tons, which would be the smallest harvest since 1976.
