Highlights from the 2024 harvest year: Historically large pea harvest – rye harvest insufficient for Finnish rye bread

The oat harvest produced on Finnish fields will be larger than the barley harvest for the first time in almost 50 years. The rye harvest will only be sufficient for roughly six months of consumption. In contrast, the pea harvest will be the largest in the 100-year history of the statistics. These and many other harvest data from 2024 are available in the preliminary data on the official crop production statistics of the Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke).

Regular cereal harvest at roughly 3.3 million tons

During the autumn season, combine harvesters work on Finnish fields over an area of almost a million hectares, harvesting yields for the winter. Barley and oats are the most significant cereals. They account for more than 70 per cent of the total cereal harvest.

“This year, the oat harvest will reclaim the number one position, which it lost to barley in 1977. In the over 100-year history of the statistics, barley has held on to its lead for nearly five decades”, says Anneli Partala, Senior Statistician at Luke.

Smallest rye harvest in five years

The rye harvest shows significant variation from one year to the next, mainly due to Finland’s short growing season and heavy rains in autumn. This year’s small harvest resulted from the significant rainfall in autumn 2023, when not all willing farmers were able to sow rye. Last summer’s drought also reduced the rye harvest. The calculated rye harvest will be sufficient for almost six months of Finnish consumption.

Historically large pea harvest

Pea production skyrocketed five years ago. The food and feed pea area and yield have increased almost ten times in a decade. The pea area has been larger than the rye area since 2020. Pea has replaced the use of soy in high-protein feed products.

Average green fodder harvest

The silage fodder yield is estimated at more than eight billion kilos. Silage fodder has been the primary green fodder in Finland since the 1990s. Before that, most grasslands were harvested as dry hay. The percentage of dry hay of the total grassland area has decreased down to a fifth.

A tenth of the rye harvest is organic

More than four per cent of this year’s cereal harvest was organic. Organic farming played the most important role in rye production, accounting for roughly a tenth of the rye harvest. Oats made up two thirds of the organic cereal harvest of some 143,000 tons. The organic oat harvest of roughly 91,000 tons marks the second largest in Finland.

The organic pea harvest is also historically large. Of the total pea harvest of roughly 102,000 tons, organic peas accounted for 12 per cent, or 12,000 tons.