Flax in FRANCE:

The sowings haven’t come to an end yet. They are likely to be over by the end of the week as the weather forecast is good for the coming days.

In some places up to 20% remain to be done.

Generally speaking we can say that the coming up of plants is taking place in conditions worse than last year: 60 to 80% of the plants have germinated normally, the remaining 20 to 40% are less normal because of the heavy rainfalls that happened right after the sowings (for this reason the department of Eure will have to proceed to the re-sowing of some fields due to the capping of the soils) and because of the present temperatures that are lower than last year. Some seeds happen to stay more than one month in the soils.

For the same reasons we noticed in some fields, mainly in Normandy, a lower density of plants to the square meter than usual: 1200 to 1500 plants instead of the standard 1800. Obviously it will have an impact on the straw tonnage.

Below some pictures that were taken in Calvados last week: