You're reading: Financial Times: Southeast European heatwave decimates agriculture

In the Balkans and Ukraine, the current heatwave follows one of the harshest winters in memory, with temperatures dropping below minus 30C, heavy snowfalls and parts of the Black Sea freezing over.

Even as the US Midwest is ravaged by drought, unusually hot and dry weather has affected much of Europe’s prime agricultural land – from eastern Italy across the Balkans and Black Sea, and into Russia as far as western Siberia and in Kazakhstan.

In Ukraine, wheat production is set to fall by almost a third, though the corn harvest should dip only slightly with increased acreage making up for lower yields. Official estimates put corn exports at 12.7m tons for the coming marketing year, compared to 14m in the previous period. 

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