Harvest better than expected

As the Ministry of Agriculture summarised after the end of the field work to bring in the harvest, based on data from the NAK Chamber of Agriculture, sunflower yields were 1.8-2.9 tonnes per hectare or an average of 2.5 tonnes per hectare. The total harvest harvested on 680,000 hectares thus reached 1.7 million tonnes, which is around 5% below the average of the last five years. In the case of maize, the drought in the lowlands only allowed hectare yields of 3.3-4.5 tonnes, compared to 7.7 tonnes in western Transdanubia. With an average yield of 5.8 tonnes per hectare, more than 5 million tonnes of maize were ultimately harvested from 865,000 hectares.

As the area under cultivation increased dynamically, the soya harvest rose by half to 250,000 tonnes. Soya beans also suffered from the dry heat, so that the average yield fell to 2.2 tonnes/ha. At 450,000 tonnes, the sugar beet harvest exceeded the previous year’s result, while only just under 175,000 tonnes of potatoes were harvested from the fields.