Dry west, wet east: Europe's winter sowing is a split map

The European Commission’s crop monitors say the 2026 harvest is drawing to a close and that field work is well advanced across most of Europe¹. Yield forecasts have barely moved since late September and remain below the five-year average for most crops, with some further slight downward revisions where dry soils cut yields and delayed bringing the crop in¹.

The new story is autumn planting. Persistently low soil moisture across parts of western, central and south-eastern Europe is hampering rapeseed emergence and raising worries for winter cereals¹. France, southern Belgium, Luxembourg and southern Germany are named for patchy rapeseed stands; eastern Germany and Poland need meaningful rain for establishment; sowing has been slow in parts of France and the Benelux¹. Recent rain helped southern Germany, but more is needed¹.

Farther north the problem flips. Prolonged rainfall in the Baltic states and Finland has waterlogged soils, stalling winter sowing and locally blocking the last of the harvest¹. With the planting window closing, some winter area is expected to shrink in favour of spring crops¹. Ireland, for once, is the quiet success: an almost perfect autumn for oilseed rape and cereals¹.

Forecast rain may yet improve moisture across much of the continent, while drier spells could help the waterlogged north¹. For you, the link to the shop is lagged and indirect — feed, flour and oilseed prices move on balances, not on one dry field. The useful reading is institutional: MARS bulletins, national sowing progress and the insurance that covers a failed establishment are how a continent manages weather that will not average out.