Finland
February 24, 2016
In 2015, the cereal crops were the smallest in three years. Despite this, 500 million kilos of grains can be exported, since the harvest totalled 3.7 billion kilos and annual consumption is 3.2 billion. Of all the cereals, only rye has been imported to Finland in significant amounts in recent decades, as its production has rarely met domestic needs. Last autumn was an exception: for the first time in fifteen years, the rye crop – around 108 million kilos – was sufficient for the domestic market.
After two years of record harvests, the grain crop diminished by ten per cent. Barley, oats and wheat crops declined, while the rye crop went up by almost 45 per cent from 2014.
Well over half of all grains – 2.3 billion kilos – is used on farms, mainly as feed for domesticated animals. The rest of the harvest – 1.4 billion kilos – goes to other uses: to the Finnish food and beverage industry and to export markets.
Large wheat crop – poor quality
The wheat crop was good in terms of quantity, nearly one billion kilos – the third largest during the one hundred years in which statistics have been compiled. However, the baking quality of wheat was poor. Only around 18 per cent of the harvest exceeds the criteria for baking quality. The last time that the quantity of baking-quality wheat was this low was seven years ago.
Photo: Tapio Tuomela / LukePea and broad bean crops nearly doubled
Both pea (25 million kilos) and broad bean (27 million kilos) crops grew by as much as 25–75 per cent from the previous year. The rise was driven by the doubling of the area under peas and the increase of more than 50 per cent in the area under broad beans. Both areas grew to the level of sugar beet, i.e. to more than 10,000 hectares. There is demand for domestically produced protein both as food and feed. It is estimated that only 15 per cent of the feed protein sources for domesticated animals is produced in Finland.
Record crops of cereals harvested green
The majority of the around 650,000 hectares under fodder grass is harvested for silage, while only one-sixth is harvested for hay. The silage yield grew by five per cent from 2014. The hay yield was average. Last summer, the area under cereals harvested green exceeded that under hay. Some 100,000 hectares of the area under cereals was harvested green for livestock feed.
Share of organic production continues to be low
Both in livestock and crop production, organic production accounts for one to two per cent, on average, for almost all products. Of the cereals, the share of organic production is the largest for rye. Around eight per cent of the rye crop for 2015, or a little over five million kilos, was organic. For peas and broad beans, the share of organic production was also larger than for other crops, 10–20 per cent.
Farms submit information dutifully
More than 95 per cent of the farms covered submitted information to the crop survey conducted every autumn by the Statistical Services of the Natural Resources Institute Finland. In 2015, information was requested from 6,000 farms involved in conventional cultivation and 600 farms involved in organic cultivation. On the basis of the sample information, the crop data for the most important field crops was calculated regionally for all of the approximately 51,000 farms in Finland. Preliminary crop statistics were published on 26 November 2015. The preliminary data were quite accurate, but the final crop statistics cover a larger number of cultivated plants.
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