Grain harvest hits 20-year rockbottom

The country’s grain harvest this year sharply dropped to almost the level recorded in 1998, said the Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke) in a press release based on the findings of its latest crop production survey.

The potato harvest, however, was qualified d by the responding farmers as quiet large and at par of the as in the year before, said a press release issued by Luke.

The grain harvest totalled 2.7 million tons, at par the level of the late 1960s, when barley cultivation expanded in the face of skyrocketing demand for domestic animal feed production.

“Even though the price paid for cereals has been higher than usual, the shrunken grain harvest volume poses a number of challenges to cereal and domestic animal farms, who are now at a loss and are struggling to cope with the missing volume from the targeted harvest,” said Anneli Partala, a senior statistician at Luke.

The decline in grain harvest is not an isolated event either. Along with Finland, the entire Baltic Sea region has experienced the same shocking decline in grain harvest.

Besides, the kernels of oats this year are also smaller than is usual, indicating a lower mill and feed quality.

The 41,000 tonnes of rye obtained last year after thrashing the more than 110,000-tonne harvest did make the country self-sufficient in this regard.

The rye harvest typically fluctuates too much from year to year. This year’s low harvest was already feared one year ago, when the fact was confirmed that the cultivated area was not large enough to help Finland maintain that self-sufficiency.

Calculated together, the harvests of turnip rape and rapeseed have turned out to be approximately 70,000 tonnes, posting a more than 20 percent slide from the last year’s figure. The last time the level of turnip rape and rapeseed harvests were so small was four years back, even though their cultivation area was one-fourth smaller than this year.

Oat is by far the most cultivated organic cereal in Finland. But, the organic oat harvest, too, has slipped down by roughly 20 per cent from than in the last year to 45,000 tonnes. The organic rye harvest, too, has fallen short of expectation by the same amount.

Organic cereals make up for nearly three per cent of the total grain production in Finland.

Luke collects crop production information from approximately 6,200 farms that include 660 organic farms through telephonic interviews and using an online app. The preliminary statistics contain information received from about 4,800 farms. The final report of the survey will be released in March 2019, when the more specific and confirmed data will be available from the farms included in the survey sample and thus facilitating the arrive at final calculations of harvest volumes.