Wheat and barley crops in southeast
Germany will probably avoid damage from rain and flooding as
strawberries and asparagus growers face losses from inundated
fields, analysts and farm groups said.

Central Europe has been hit by floods after wet weather
this weekend swelled rivers, halting shipping on the upper Rhine
River and the Danube. Southern Bavaria and most of Saxony
received 50 to 125 millimeters (2-4.9 inches) of rain in the
past two days, as much as in the entire previous three months,
while the southeast of Bavaria got 125 to 250 millimeters, data
from weather office Deutscher Wetterdienst show.

“It’s a big problem for people who reap strawberries and
asparagus, they can’t harvest at the moment,” said Johannes
Funke, a spokesman for farm lobby Deutscher Bauernverband.
“It’s asparagus time right now. Wheat and other cereals at the
moment are growing and green and not close to harvest.”

Germany is the European Union’s second-biggest grower of
wheat and rapeseed behind France, and Bavaria makes up 19
percent of the country’s wheat surface and 15 percent of the
rapeseed area, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Milling wheat for November delivery advanced 1 percent to
208.25 euros ($270.80) a metric ton on NYSE Liffe in Paris by
4:35 p.m., while malting barley for delivery the same month
advanced 1.2 percent to 240.25 euros a ton.

Most Developed

“The most developed crop is winter barley, which is at the
start of grain filling,” said Paul Gaffet, a grains analyst at
Offre Demande Agricole, a French farm adviser. “Regarding
quality, we haven’t yet reached the critical stage for damage.”

Most flooding is near rivers and affecting pasture rather
than cropland, according to Funke at the Berlin-based DBV. He
said it’s too soon to estimate damage to grains, with harvesting
expected to start closer to the end of June. The group is
awaiting reports from farmers later this week.

Standing water in some plots means produce growers can’t
access their strawberry fields and asparagus or plant lettuce
and cabbage, Funke said.

Germany is Europe’s largest asparagus grower with
production of 102,400 tons last year, more than double the
harvest in runner-up Spain, according to EU statistics office
Eurostat. The company is the second-biggest producer of
strawberries in the 27-nation bloc, behind Spain.

Excess Rain

While there’s been excess rain in regions including Bavaria
and Thuringia, it’s too early to say whether there was damage to
grain and rapeseed, said Guido Seedler, a spokesman at German
farm-industry group Deutscher Raiffeisenverband e.V.

For grain in Germany and Poland, there are “not too many
worries” because flooding has mainly affected grassland,
according to Celine Sicard, an analyst at InVivo, the largest
exporter of French wheat.

Winter grains can withstand several days of flooding, while
for developing spring crops losses can be “very rapid,”
according to Sicard. Drier weather in Germany this week will
ease wetness, MDA Weather Services wrote in a forecast today.

“If rain has been very brutal that could have caused
lodging in fields, and that would impact yields and quality,”
said Gaffet at ODA, referring to flattened grain. “That depends
more on the violence of the rain than final amount received.”

To contact the reporter on this story:
Rudy Ruitenberg in Paris at
rruitenberg@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Claudia Carpenter at
ccarpenter2@bloomberg.net