Farmers in the largest four European Union wheat producers have expanded wheat sowings, partly because dry weather prevented rapeseed plantings, analysts and traders said.
"Rapeseed sowing problems mean the stage has been set for larger EU wheat crops and export supplies this summer, if crops get through the winter okay and we get normal weather up to the harvest," one German trader said.
In the EU’s largest wheat producer, France, winter soft wheat sowings for the 2019 crop increased 3.5% on the year to 5.03 million hectares, the farm ministry estimated.
