Drought affects crop yield

The map shows the actual evapotranspiration in Europe during the months April, May and June of 2010. The scale runs from zero (black) to 4 mm/day (blue). Average evapotranspiration in England, Netherlands, Belgium, Northern France, Germany, Poland is some 1 mm/day.  Optimum is 4-5 mm/day. As a result crop yields fall dramatically.

Yield forecast 2008

27 August 2008 - In general average to above average wheat yields are expected in Europe, though in many places yields are less than the previous year. In southern France, the Iberian peninsula and Italy, the growing conditions have been very favorable. Very good wheat yields are expected in Spain (+28%), Portugal (+28%), Italy (+19%), France (+19%), Switzerland (+25%), Slovenia (+23%) and Croatia (+12%). Relatively good yields are also expected in Central Europe, Eastern Europe and the Balkan: Albania(+10%),Macedonia (+5.2%), Bosnia (+6%), Byelarus (+3%), Bulgaria(1%), Germany(+5%) and Poland (+3%). Also the United Kingdom (+12%) and Ireland (13%) the growing season was very favorable. Drier conditions are seen in Sweden, the Ukraine and Denmark where the yield is expected to be respectively -10%, -7% and -5% below the 5 years average.  

The expected relatively good yields in provinces Maramures, Suceava, Neamt and Iasi of Romania will be lower due to the recent floodings that have destroyed parts of the crops that were not harvested yet. Also in Ukraine, yields will be lower than expected in Ivano-Frankivska due to the recent floodings. Download the bulletin. View in Google Earth

Forecasted wheat yield relative to the 5 yr average.

Forecasting quality

We have investigated our potato yield forecasting skil for the EU-4 as a function of the time of the forecast. The graph below shows the difference between our forecasted and the Eurostat reported potato yield as a function of the forecast moment. Best forecasts are obtained in the period of 1-21 August. 

The graph below presents a comparison between our FAST potato yield forecasts at the national level and reported Eurostat potato yields fora period of 5 years. At the european level the absolute difference between forecasted and reported yield was 1% in 2008 .

Comparison of EARS-FAST potato yield forecasts and Eurostat reported yields at NUTS-2 level for the years 2002-2007. RMSE is 3 tonnes/ha and pearson correlation R² = 0.96.