EU: Countries which planted and harvested earlier the barley crop proved to be in great advantage

The southern countries of Europe from Spain to the Balkans planted and harvested early, which proved to be a great advantage. All winter barley in the EU was combined on time and shows good qualities. Spring barley suffered, of course, from drought and heat in June/July, but was nevertheless of decent and in some places of good quality, if harvested before the rains.

The largest part of the French crop, parts of the English, Dutch and German barley, and almost all barley in Hungary, Austria and Slovakia were harvested before the rains.
The disaster happened further east and north, in South and East Germany, the Czech Republic, Poland, the Baltic States, Denmark and South Sweden. Also neighboring Belarus lost its malting barley crop to the permanent rains, which started end of July.

The already heat-damaged and ripe barley fields started to germinate in the fields, the amount of sprouted grains makes much of the barley unusable for malting. At the end of the harvest period Scotland, Central Sweden and Finland experienced better conditions and harvested crops of fair quality.

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