Finland sees poor rye harvest, bumper oat, pea productions

The total cereal harvest produced on Finnish fields in 2024 was slightly smaller than average at 3.2 million tons, according to the statistics of the Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke) published on Thursday.

The calculated rye harvest of about 48,000 tons covers demand for roughly six months of the amount required for Finnish rye bread. The rye harvest was almost half as small as in the previous year.

“As rye stocks are not particularly large at present, there may be a need to import rye before the coming autumn harvest,” said Anneli Partala, Senior Statistician of Luke.

The oat harvest was larger than the barley harvest for the first time in 50 years, with the oat harvest being slightly more than 1.2 million tons, and the barley harvest slightly smaller.

Last year, the pea harvest exceeded 100,000 tons. Most of it consisted of feed peas at about 90,000 tons. The production of feed peas started to grow rapidly seven years ago – and has increased sevenfold in seven years. At the same time, the food pea harvest has almost doubled.

The oat harvest was a sixth larger than on average. In recent years, oats have been increasingly used as food. This is reflected in the increased use of oats in the domestic industry. The milling of oats is at a record level, approaching 200,000 tons last year. This means that the consumption of oats is already close to wheat.

“Oat is also a guaranteed export cereal for us. In addition to oat products, 300–400,000 tons of kernels are exported annually,” said Partala.

Last year’s potato harvest was about 550,000 tons. It will be sufficient until the next harvest. The potato consumption has decreased over the decades. The largest potato harvest in Finland was recorded in 1948, when nearly two million tons of potatoes were harvested, which was almost four times more than last autumn.

Organic production accounted for approximately four per cent of Finland’s total cereal harvest. Oat is clearly the most produced organic cereal. Its harvest of 91,000 tons makes up most of the total organic cereal harvest of about 140,000 tons. In this year as well, a tenth of our rye harvest, or more than four million kilos, consisted of organic rye.

Information for the most recent crop production statistics was obtained in October–December 2024 from roughly 5,100 farms, of which 620 were organic farms.