Haute-Saône. Early, high-quality harvests, but wheat prices plummet: Haute-Saône farms between questions and satisfaction

The 2025 wheat and barley harvests will end ten days early. In one plot, a farmer harvested up to 95 quintals of barley per hectare, compared to the average of 65, "a first," he said. Weather conditions have been favorable so far, while prices are falling due to the geopolitical context. The complete opposite of the 2024 season. A visit to the plots.

Harvests, like the wheat harvest here in Pusy-et-Epenoux, are almost complete in Haute-Saône. They stopped with the rain that has been falling since Sunday, July 6, but should resume by the end of the week. Photo by Edouard Choulet

In agriculture, as in the weather, the years follow one another, but are not alike. There is no need to look in the tractor rearview mirror to remember the many climatic hazards endured by "our" farmers over the past ten years in Haute-Saône. Last year, some farmers in the Saône plain or in the Lanterne region were never able to collect a bale of hay because the fields were so soaked by storms. A year that contrasted with the drought episodes of 2022, or even 2023, when harvests had fallen by 60% for wheat or rapeseed. During the summer of 2024, the ears of wheat had, in places, rotted on the spot due to the humidity while the price of wheat was breaking records.

"Good for morale," says the president of the Chamber of Agriculture

"We can say that the...

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