Jean Lefevre, like many other French farmers, has just endured one of the worst wheat harvests in decades, because from the moment he began sowing his crops last October to the moment he began harvesting last month, it hardly stopped raining.
France, the European Union’s largest grain producer, has experienced particularly wet weather over the past year, including a month of continuous rain in October and November, the wettest spring on record and violent storms last month.
The rainy weather and soggy fields delayed sowing and affected the development of crops. The Ministry of Agriculture estimates that France will have its worst wheat harvest since the 1980s, 25 percent less than last year. Other cereals such as winter barley are also badly affected.
“We have been in water since October. We sowed in very difficult conditions and today we are harvesting on wet ground again. I have neighbors who got stuck with their harvesters or trailers,” says 43-year-old Lefevre, who runs a farm in the Oise region of northern France.
Importance of wheat
Wheat is the most widely grown cereal in France. About half of production is exported within or outside the EU. This contributes to the country’s trade balance, even though France has faced strong competition from the Black Sea countries in recent years.
However, as a player on the global market, France is exposed to fluctuations in world market prices. While farmers had hoped for rising prices in their country given the shortage of supplies, in reality they were under pressure due to a global oversupply of grain, which was due to abundant harvests in major producing countries such as competitor Russia.
At once
Another problem is the rising production costs since the pandemic – including for equipment, fertilizers and land rent – which, together with low harvest volumes and low prices, represent a triple burden for farmers.
“Everything at once: catastrophic harvests, low prices and equally high costs,” says Laurent Pollet, who grows cereals on 200 hectares of land in the Oise region.
Most farmers expressed frustration that the crisis is coming at a time when France has had only a caretaker government since parliamentary elections called by President Emmanuel Macron last month.
“If both harvests and prices are bad, the consequences will be catastrophic. Some people will need psychological help and most of us will need financial support,” Lefevre said.
“But without a government it is very complicated. We were already talking to a wall, now we are talking against the wind.”
“Excessive” regulation
Lefevre joined thousands of farmers who protested earlier this year and blocked major highways around Paris, claiming they were not paid enough and were crushed by excessive environmental regulations.
Wheat farmers assume that the grain crisis is unlikely to lead to new protests, mainly because they do not have the time for it.
“We are harvesting, in 10 days the rapeseed sowing will begin, then we will continue with the wheat sowing, from mid-September we will have the beet harvest, we will be in the tunnel until November 15th. So a return to the road is not an objective,” says Emeric Duchesne, another cereal farmer from the Oise department.
