Europe: Initial acreage and production estimates for barley
Planting of spring barley is finished in most of Europe except for Central Sweden and Finland, and large parts of the CIS countries. But even in Russia and Ukraine seeding is well advanced, helped by favourable weather in April. Prospects are for good crops of winter and spring barley, albeit not with the record yields harvested last year. Last years total EU-25 barley crop was 61.7 million tonnes, estimates for 2005 range from 54.7 to 57.1 million tonnes.