According to Lantmännen’s forecast, this year’s Swedish harvest will total 5.4 million tonnes of grain. This is significantly better than last year’s 3.4 million tonnes and corresponds to an average harvest. Last year, many farmers were hit twice, partly by poor volume and then by poor quality of the harvest as a result of heavy rains.
Right now it looks good, significantly better than last year, says Lars-Erik Lundkvist, economic policy expert at the National Association of Farmers (LRF).
Last year’s grain harvest was among the worst in 30 years and Sweden, which usually exports grain, has had to import to cover the need.
This year we should be able to export. In a normal year, we export around 20 percent of the harvest, and we should be able to do that this year as well.
The harvest of fodder for cattle and dairy cows also looks to be normal. But it is too early to count on any major price changes at the consumer level.
There probably won’t be any big changes. Prices here also depend on the world market price of grain. If there are large harvests in Europe and the rest of the world, there may be price pressure, otherwise we will probably not see any major price changes.