Europe's maize harvest heads for its worst year in three decades

The harvest Europe did not get

For weeks this was a forecast. This week it became a count.

Relentless heat and the worst soil drought on record could halve France’s maize crop, analysts told Reuters. [1] The French agriculture ministry projects a 35% fall to 9 million tonnes. The analysis firms Expana and Argus both expect under 7 million, which would be the smallest French harvest since 1976. [1]

The whole bloc is short. In late July the European Commission cut its 2026/27 EU maize forecast to 51.9 million tonnes, already the lowest since 2007. [1] Some analysts now expect output below 50 million tonnes for the first time since the 1990s. [1] “Agronomically speaking, the situation in the EU is very bad,” said Gabriel Antonio, an analyst at Expana. [1] Weather did most of it. Farmers had also planted less, partly because fertiliser and energy cost more. [1]

Most EU maize goes to animal feed and industry rather than straight to a plate. A short crop shows up first in the price of feed, then in milk, meat and eggs.

Same heat, five different losses

Italy is Europe’s largest rice grower, with about 235,000 hectares planted last year and more than 80% of it in three northern provinces. [2] This year the Po River Basin Authority declared a high level of drought severity, and Lake Maggiore is classified as being in extreme drought. [2] Irrigation groups have introduced water rotation for the first time. [2] One Lombardy grower, Giuseppe Tagliabue, sent all his water to part of his land and abandoned the rest. [2]

Austria is a wet country, and it expects a grain harvest 19% smaller. [3] Farmers are bringing cattle down from parched Alpine pastures and sending some to slaughter early, because there is no grass and the winter feed is being eaten in August. [3]

On the Danube, water is so low that a Budapest boulder known as the Rock of Starvation has surfaced almost entirely. [4] For centuries its appearance meant the harvest was failing. Hungary has shut all but one of its Danube-cooled nuclear reactors for the first time in 44 years. [4] Prime Minister Peter Magyar warned the drought’s economic damage will exceed the 2022 dry spell. [4] Istvan Somogyi, a farmer in Pest County, put his own loss at nearly 50%, possibly 70%. [4]

Britain’s cereal and oilseed harvest is forecast at 18.5 million tonnes, the worst since detailed records began in 1984. [5] Wheat yields are down more than a tonne a hectare from a normal 7.9. [5] Grass growth is about half what it should be, so winter feed stores are being opened now. Milk production is down about 1%, according to the industry board AHDB. [5]

In the United States the loss came from a spring freeze rather than a summer drought. Steve Ela found nine peaches on 12,000 trees in western Colorado. [6] Pennsylvania loss estimates run 90% to 100% for peaches and 95% to 100% for cherries. [6] A fruit tree can take eight years to bear, so a lost season cannot simply be replanted. [6]

Not everything failed. Britain’s berries are smaller and sweeter after the sunniest July on record, and cider apples may have a bumper year. [5] Supermarkets sort apples by size, though, so fewer of them will reach a shelf. [5]

The bill has not reached the till

Prices have been strangely calm. British food and drink inflation ran at 1.7% in the year to June, the lowest since August 2024. [7] In February the industry had warned it could approach 10% by Christmas. [7] Reuters credits fierce supermarket competition, shoppers refusing further rises, and suppliers locking in energy and ingredient costs further ahead. [7]

The wider system also carries more slack than it used to. Near-record stockpiles, higher-yielding varieties and the rise of Brazil and Russia as exporters leave the world less exposed to this year’s very strong El Nino than in past events. [8] El Nino is the Pacific warming pattern that scrambles rainfall worldwide, and it is already biting. Panama has had no major storm since early May, Ethiopia’s highlands are in one of their driest summers in four decades, and India had its fifth-driest June since 1901. [9]

Where a loss falls outside any policy, someone absorbs it quietly. Moody’s estimates last summer’s European heatwaves cost 43 billion euros in lost output while generating about 500 million euros of insured payouts. [20]

America’s food-safety machinery, stretched thin

The cyclospora outbreak traced to imported iceberg lettuce has sickened more than 24,000 people and killed two. [11] A separate salmonella outbreak tied to jalapenos grown in Sinaloa, Mexico has sickened 345 people across 27 states and hospitalised 36. [13] Whole Foods pulled items containing jalapenos this week. [13] An unrelated recall of nearly 1.6 million dozen Texas eggs was raised to the highest risk class after 98 illnesses and 26 hospitalisations in 17 states. [14]

The New York Times obtained emails showing Michigan investigators asked Taco Bell for supply-chain records on 1 July. [10] The FDA did not have everything it needed until 13 July. [10] A rule requiring those records within 24 hours was due in January 2026 and has been pushed to 2028. [10] The Guardian traced that rule, written into a 2011 law, through 15 years of delay and industry lobbying. [11]

FDA employment is down 22% in 2026 against 2024, and foreign food-facility inspections fell nearly 13% in fiscal 2025 while imports kept rising. [12] The agency has finalised guidance for cut-produce processors covering sanitation, supplier checks and refrigeration, and its acting head says shoppers should feel confident in lettuce. [15]

The cost of next year’s crop

Farmers are pricing the 2027 crop now, and it is dearer. Anhydrous ammonia, the main nitrogen fertiliser, was $915.50 a ton in Illinois on 7 August. [16] That is 16% above last year and 23% above 2024, after prices topped $1,100 in spring. [16] Diesel is higher too. [16] In India, import costs have pushed the government to urge farmers to use less fertiliser and to rethink a long-standing subsidy. [17]

The step nobody photographs

In Nyagatare, in eastern Rwanda, the FAO, the UN’s food agency, handed a farmers’ cooperative five maize shellers, two tractors and two drying units this month. [18] A grain store is under construction. [18] It is not a headline. But post-harvest losses quietly erase a share of what farmers already grew. [18] Grain gets eaten by pests, spoiled by damp, or contaminated with aflatoxin, a mould toxin. [18] Without safe storage, farmers are also forced to sell at the worst moment, when everyone else is selling too. [18] The work runs with the World Food Programme and IFAD under Rwanda’s agriculture ministry. [18]

The far end of the same chain is being counted too. A national strategy modelled for Uganda found that better handling of organic waste could avoid up to 1.3 million tonnes of carbon-dioxide-equivalent methane a year by 2035. [19] It would also make compost for roughly 271,000 hectares of maize. [19]