Price boom alleviates drought-stricken Finnish farmers

Unusual lack of rain hit the Finnish agriculture hard this summer. It kept the harvest at 2.7 billion kilograms, which is 25 percent less than in the previous two years, Statistics Finland revealed on Thursday.

"But the smaller than usual harvest is of high quality now and the share of grain sufficiently good for making bread is higher than usual," Ilkka Lehtinen, Statistics Finland long-time agricultural income statistician, told national broadcaster Yle.

Even though the 2018 harvest remained low in volume, the some 40 percent increase in the sales prices offset the impact. Lehtinen said on Thursday that the overall result will be ten percent on the profit side.

Ilkka Schulman, the grain specialist at the Central Organization of Farmers and Forestowners said the Statistics Finland claim does not give the full picture.

"Farmers sold a greater part of the grains in advance at prices that were lower. Thus there was not much left to sell when the price level went up," he noted.