Low cereal harvest in 2018 emptied stocks

The autumn of 2018 signified the second successive year with a low cereal harvest, according to the Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke).

Of the harvested 2.7 million tons, 60 per cent were sold from farms. One quarter of all cereals sold from farms, roughly 400,000 tons, was exported. This was the lowest export volume in a decade, said a Luke press release.

“Cereal stocks of farms emptied last year when the harvest level was lower than annual consumption. In Finland, some three billion kilos of cereals are consumed every year,” said Anneli Partala, a senior statistician at Luke.

The majority of cereals produced in Finland are used as feed for domestic animals – some 56 per cent of the 2018 harvest. Barley, wheat and oat are important fodder cereals in Finland. Only rye is used purely for food.

Oats is an important export article for Finland. More than one-third of the 2018 oats harvest, i.e. 300,000 tons, was exported.

While the export levels of oats are fairly stable, other cereals are mainly exported when their harvest levels exceed domestic consumption. Between 1 July 2018 and 30 June 2019, only the export levels of oats were significant, totalling nearly 80,000 tons.