Competitor Watch: Production is a Mixed Bag in the EU and Black Sea

Aug 22, 2024

By Tyllor Ledford

As the Northern Hemisphere harvest progresses, more output and quality information has become available. Seen during the 2024 Paris Olympics opening ceremonies, persistent rains have continued to hit crop growing areas in France (photo above, iStock) and Germany, influencing harvest quality and yields, while the drought impacts in central and southern Russia have had well documented impacts on yield potential. This analysis will assess the current state of wheat production in the EU and Black Sea regions and examine its effects on global exportable supplies.

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Rains Dampen European Harvest

The August 2024 World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates (WASDE) decreased EU production by 2.0 MMT to 128.0 MMT, 5% below last year and the five-year average. According to FranceAgriMer, the French wheat crop sits at 26.3 MMT, down 24% from the five-year average and the lowest output in nearly 40 years. Looking at quality, early testing shows a lower test weight of 74-75 kg/hl while protein sits around 11% (dry matter basis). Stratégie Grains has assessed that just 72% of the harvest meets milling quality standards, a decrease from last year’s 84%.

In Germany, conditions were more favorable, but damp weather still affected planting and crop development. As a result, the Stratégie Grains estimates for German production sit at 19.2 MMT, down from 21.3 MMT last year. Similarly, Stratégie Grains expects a 9.4% decrease in Polish wheat production due to dry conditions in May and June. Of the major EU exporters, only Romanian wheat production holds strong at 10.3 MMT, according to Stratégie Grains. With decreased production in several key producers, USDA estimates put EU exports down 9% to 34.0 MMT.

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Dryness in the Black Sea

The August WASDE kept the much-anticipated Russian wheat crop at 83.0 MMT, down 8.4 MMT from last year, weighed by the well documented influences of drought on yield potential. Likewise, SovEcon lowered their Russian wheat production estimates by 1.8 MMT to 82.9 MMT, in line with the USDA. Likewise, USDA put Ukrainian production at 21.6 MMT, a 1.4 MMT reduction from 2023/24 due to dry conditions.

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Supply and Demand Impacts

Despite a cumulative 16.7 MMT drop in wheat production from the EU, Russia, and Ukraine, the total output for major exporters is just 1% lower than last year (2.9 MMT) and 1% below the five-year average. Increased production forecasts from the U.S., Australia, and Canada have balanced out the declines, contributing to adequate global wheat availability. Nevertheless, the decreased EU and Black Sea production will more heavily impact importers in the MENA region such as Morocco and Egypt, which may prompt them to buy from alternative suppliers.

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Video: The 15-Year Bet Behind Every New Variety!

Canada is trying to decide how much agricultural research capacity it can afford to lose. Brian Rossnagel believes the better question is whether the country can afford to rebuild it.

The longtime barley and oat breeder makes the case with a simple fact about his profession: the consequences of today’s decisions may not become visible for 10 or 15 years.

“Pick the right parents. That’s the biggest thing,” Rossnagel says. “If you pick the wrong parents, you’re not going to get anywhere—and you don’t know that until 10 years, 15 years later.”

That warning carries particular weight as Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada moves to reduce spending and streamline parts of its science operations. The department’s 2026–27 plan anticipates the loss of approximately 665 positions by 2028–29 and says some research will be reduced where capacity exists in academia or industry. AAFC says the changes will make its science operations more cost-effective over the long term.

For Canada’s seed industry, Rossnagel’s career illustrates what is at stake.

This fall, the retired University of Saskatchewan breeder will be inducted into the Canadian Agricultural Hall of Fame. During his 35-year career at the Crop Development Centre, he helped develop more than 100 barley and oat varieties, including CDC Austenson—one of Western Canada’s most widely grown feed barleys. His induction recognizes not only those varieties, but the collaboration and research system that made them possible.

Rossnagel is quick to emphasize that none of it was the work of one person.

“The first thing I thought about was all the other people who contributed to whatever success I and my program had over the years,” he says. “We know that it’s not an individual who does this. It’s a group—a team.”

That team extends well beyond the breeder whose name appears beside a variety. It includes technicians, pathologists, quality specialists, statisticians, regional testing sites, seed growers and industry partners. It also includes the breeders who came before and those who will carry the germplasm forward.

CDC Fraser barley, for example, moved through three breeding careers. Its parents came from Brian Harvey’s program. Rossnagel advanced the material after Harvey retired, and Aaron Beattie later guided it through registration and release.

That kind of handoff is normal in plant breeding. The person who makes the original cross may never see the resulting variety reach farmers.

It also explains why lost research capacity cannot simply be switched back on when budgets improve.

“If you shut it off, it’s very, very difficult—and particularly costly—to start it up again,” Rossnagel says. “If you have to start from scratch, it’s going to be at least 10 years before anybody notices whether you’re getting anything done or not.”

The concern is not simply how many experimental lines Canada can process. Modern equipment, statistical tools and genetic technologies allow today’s breeding programs to evaluate tens of thousands of lines—far more than Rossnagel could handle when he entered the field in the early 1970s.

But efficiency and automation do not generate every idea.

“If you pare back down, and instead of having six or seven individual scientists concentrating on wheat breeding, you go down and say three people could handle all this, well, that’s half the ideas gone,” he says. “Particularly if you happen to lose the three people who had the really neat and innovative ideas, boy, that’s a problem.”

It is a timely distinction for Canadian agriculture. Consolidating programs may preserve the volume of material moving through a system, at least initially. It may not preserve the diversity of thinking, regional knowledge or willingness to pursue unconventional crosses.

That regional knowledge matters because Canadian agriculture is not one uniform production environment. A variety suited to southern Alberta may face different disease, moisture and maturity pressures than one grown in Manitoba, Ontario or Atlantic Canada.

“Agriculture is applied biology,” Rossnagel says. “Biology, all around the Earth, moves from the poles to the equator. It does not move from Newfoundland to B.C. like politics do.”