Corn harvesting in France further quickened after last week's progress amid dryer conditions but continued to lag the previous season's progress.
The harvested area reached 32pc in the week to 18 October, more than doubling from a week earlier, government agency for agriculture and sea products FranceAgriMer data show. The harvest progress was now 43 percentage points slower than a year earlier, compared with a 47 percentage-point lag a week ago.
The north-central region of Ile-de-France was the furthest ahead with 48pc of acreages harvested, followed by Occitanie-Midi-Pyrenees in the south and Pays-de-la-Loire in the northwest with 46pc each.
French farmers could step up the pace of the corn harvest amid favourable weather conditions, forecast to last well into next week. And practically all of the French corn crop has reached maturity — only the regions of Bretagne, Grand-Est-Alsace and Occitanie-Midi-Pyrenees report less than 100pc of the crop below the 50pc moisture threshold, with 98pc, 99pc and 99pc, respectively.
And French corn conditions have improved significantly on the year, with 89pc of the crop rated "good-to-excellent", compared with 58pc in 2020-21.
But the jump in corn harvesting progress is straining the country's drying capacity. Some elevators in central and western France were heard to refuse new corn deliveries until 25 October, implying a possible slowdown of the harvest until next week.
