Tike (the Information Centre of the Finnish Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry) has completed the cereals balance sheet for the crop year 2009 – 2010. The good grain harvest in 2009 (4.2 million tonnes), which was the third good harvest in a row, increased Finland’s grain stockpiles at the end of the crop year to a level corresponding to annual consumption. Thus domestic needs would have been covered until late June or early July of next year, even without the 2010 crops. At the end of June, the amount of stockpiled grain, 2.8 million tonnes, was almost 860 000 tonnes higher than a year earlier.

Both production and consumption included in the cereals balance sheet
The cereals balance sheet includes figures for cereal production and consumption from one autumn grain harvest to the next. Nearly half of the grain crops harvested are for agricultural use, with two-thirds (2 million tonnes) of cereals consumed in Finland used as fodder for cattle and pigs. Around a third (0.6 million tonnes) of grain fodder is returned to farms via the agricultural industry. Finnish mills process around 0.4 million tonnes of domestic and imported grain for foodstuff use. Thus 15% of annual consumption is used in foodstuffs. Around one-tenth of the 3 million tonnes of cereals used in Finland goes towards the production of ethanol and malt. Most of the remaining tenth is accounted for as seed reserved for the next year’s crop.

Barley is Finland’s chief cereal crop
Barley represents around half of all the cereal produced and consumed in Finland. Of the 2.2 million tonnes barley crop, nearly 1.1 million tonnes were used as livestock fodder, with 0.3 million tonnes used in ethanol and malt production. Only around 10 000 tonnes of barley were used as a foodstuff, which is less than all other domestic cereals.

Oats ranked second in terms of production and consumption as a fodder grain in Finland. Livestock fodder accounts for around 80% of annual oat consumption. Although oat porridge is a popular breakfast food among Finns, only around 8% (730 000 tonnes) of oats were consumed as foodstuffs. Finland is a major global producer of oats. In 2009, over 400 000 tonnes of the 1.1 million tonnes of oats harvested in Finland were exported.

Wheat and rye for human consumption
Around 260 000 tonnes of wheat and over 90 000 tonnes of rye were processed for foodstuff use. Rye is typically grown in Finland solely for use in bread products. Only rarely do rye harvests suffice for Finnish domestic consumption, as only a small percentage of Finnish arable fields are planted with rye. Most years, Finland has to import rye, and wheat is also imported occasionally. Finnish wheat production is nearly sufficient to meet domestic consumption: around 887 000 tonnes in 2009. Even though wheat is the main cereal used in bread products, more wheat is used as livestock fodder (353 000 tonnes) than as foodstuffs (262 000 tonnes).  

Grain stockpiles bulging at the seams  
The last time Finland’s grain stockpiles were sufficient to cover an entire year’s consumption even before the autumn harvest was in the autumn of 1991, following several good crop years. Now the majority of stockpiled grain is ‘intervention grain’ managed by the EU. On 30 June 2010 at the end of the crop year, the majority of this intervention grain was oats (561 000 tonnes) while only a small proportion was wheat (17 000 tonnes). Besides these intervention stockpiles, cereal stocks are also maintained by farms, industry, businesses and the National Emergency Supply Agency.

The cereals balance sheet (for crop year 1 July 2009 – 30 June 2010) is based on Tike’s statistics on crop production and use of crops on farms as well as cereals purchased, used and stockpiled by industry and trade, and on the foreign trade statistics of the Finnish National Board of Customs. The National Board of Customs will confirm the predicted figures for 2010 in 2011, so it is possible that the foreign trade statistics for 2010 may be revised at a later date.

A table related to the statistics will be published in Matilda, the agricultural statistics service, on the home page of the Cereals balance sheet.

Additional information
Anneli Partala, Researcher, Tel. +358 20 77 21376
E-mail addresses are in the format forename.surname@mmmtike.fi