The annual Early Bird Survey (EBS), organized by the Andersons Centre, with the help of the Association of Independent Crop Consultants (AICC), assess every year the national cropping developments after winter. The current figures for Winter Oilseed rape underline with another drop down of 38 kha during winter the critical growing conditions, mainly influenced by wet autumn and strong Cabbage Stem Flea Beetle pressure. The acreage forecast for harvest 2020 calculates now only with 361.000 ha.

Based on the current rapeseed (both Winter and Spring) production forecast for harvest 2020 in former EU-28 with only 17.1 Mill. tons, the domestic oil crushers are still relying on a significant import of rapeseed. The slightly increased harvest figures based on well-developed rapeseed crops canopies in Germany, France, and Romania. A bigger increase in the production figures is limited by lower estimations for Denmark, Sweden and Latvia, where tough growing conditions lead to weaker rapeseed fields after winter.   

In order to compare own production data with other farmers british organisation AHDB developped a tool called Farmbench. The recent analysis for the production of Oilseedrape in the UK showed that the TOP 25% of the growers had especially the lowest costs in terms of Crop Protection, Fertilizer and Overhead-Costs. Theses farmers used 17% less inorganic fertilizer than the farmers with the highest costs and they save 18% costs for crop-protection. Main driver in favor of the best margins are however labour costs as the TOP 25% of the farms work on 286 hectares per full-time worker while the lowest 25% work on 190ha per full time worker. 

The growing rapeseed market in Russia must relate to a continuous improvement of the varieties. Rapool is exactly pushing this development with a permanent adaptation of the own portfolio. Actually, we are happy  to see, that the official Russian State Variety Commission registered 8 new winter oilseed hybrid shybrid With ATORA, KELTOR, KICKER, KUGA, LEXION, RAGNAR, TEMPTATION and THURE we have the opportunity to offer new hybrids and adapt our already existing spectrum in Russia.   

Winter Rapeseed belongs with more than 300.000 ha to one of the main crops in Hungary. Based on the annual figures for profitability of main arable crops in Hungary (without subsidies), which are coming from the Agricultural Economics Research Institute (AKI), we can recognize also, that rapeseed is highly profitable. The last analysis (2014 – 2018) present rapeseed with an income of 222 €/ha behind maize on the 2nd place. The comparison with sunflower (162 €/ha) and soya (57 €/ha) underline the importance as a valuable cash crop for the Hungarian farmers.  

Petr Baranyk (SPZO – Czech association of rapeseed farmers) presented during his presentation at the annual Hluk event by the end of November 2019 a positive forecast for increasing Winter rapeseed productions in Czech Republic in 2020. Based on internal evaluations of the root neck diameter, they can develop first yield forecasts for the coming summer. The current crops canopies present with 11,5 mm diameter a promising base for the crop management in spring, in comparison with 9,2 mm in previous year. This theory is confirmed by the yield forecast of COCERAL (January 2020), which estimate a yield of 3,18 t/ha in 2020 vs. 3.07 t/ha in 2019.