Agriculture: Commission publishes latest short-term outlook for main EU agricultural sectors

The latest agricultural short-term outlook report published today by the European Commission gives insights on the main agricultural markets’ trends, production and trade for 2019 and 2020. It shows among other findings that the EU cereal production is expected to recover from last year’s low in spite of the summer drought. Indeed, wheat and barley production should respectively increase by 12.5% and 10% in 2019 and 2020. On the other hand, difficult weather conditions are expected to affect EU rapeseed production. EU sugar beet production should stabilise at 119 million tonnes for 2019-2020, close to the levels of the previous year. EU exports of olive oil, pig meat, and processed apples and tomatoes should reach higher levels than previous years. Similarly, access to new markets and an increase of volumes to existing partners has led to an expected increase of EU beef exports by 8% in 2019. More information is online.