Abundant harvest for most of crops in 2020

Ljubljana – Harvest of principal crops in Slovenia was abundant last year, with farmers reporting increases of 17% in cereals for grain, 35% in potatoes and 19% in dry fodder compared to 2019, provisional data from the Statistics Office (SURS) show. The harvest of fruits in orchards and grapes in vineyards was also excellent.

Last year’s harvest was slightly better for almost all cereals, with the total output of Slovenia’s main bread cereals – wheat and spelt – up 13% to over 158,000 tonnes.

Maize for grains was meanwhile the predominant fodder cereal, yielding 10.8 tonnes per hectare; this is the first time since SURS started monitoring yields of crops it exceeded 10 tonnes per hectare.

Potato was grown on over 2,900 hectares, up 5%, with the total output of all three groups (late, early and seed potatoes) up 35% to over 89,000 tonnes, show the data released on Monday.

The area sown with oil crops, Slovenia’s most common industrial crops, was by 12% larger than in 2019. The area sown with pumpkins for oil rose the most, by 27%.

And while hops was harvested on a smaller area than in 2019, 2,723 tonnes of this culture was produced, up 6%.

Maize for silage also yielded excellently – a record 52.2 tonnes per hectare was harvested as a main crop.

Vegetables were produced on almost 5,770 hectares of land, but since this area can be harvested and resown several times in a year, the total production area of vegetables was over 7,100 hectares, yielding a total of 137,230 tonnes of vegetables.

Orchard plantations also gave an abundant harvest of late fruits: almost 66,670 tonnes of apples were picked, or an average 30.5 tonnes per hectare, and over 3,880 tonnes of pears, or 17.1 tonnes per hectare.

The situation was different for early fruit species, as the amount of peaches and nectarines harvested almost halved to 2,000 tonnes and 470 tonnes, respectively.

In extensive orchards, apple trees yielded an average 48.5 kilos per tree and an average 33.5 kilos of pears, whereas the yield of apricots, and peaches and nectarines was worse than in 2019.

Vineyards yielded similarly as in 2019, an average 6.8 tonnes per hectare, with white wine varieties yielding slightly better than red wine varieties.

Almost 74,350 tonnes of white grapes and almost 29,290 tonnes of red grapes was harvested.

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