The area in France sown with rapeseed for the next harvest has fallen sharply due to adverse weather, but wheat has regained area that was lost to frost earlier this year, the French farm ministry said on Monday. A dry end to summer hampered rapeseed sowing in France, and a damp autumn has delayed subsequent sowing of cereals, although the situation remained less severe than in rain-soaked Britain.

In its first sowing estimates for the 2013 harvest, the ministry put the winter rapeseed area at 1.49 million hectares, down 7.1 percent from the 1.60 million harvested this year but still close to the average of the past five years. The biggest decline was in the Centre region, which usually has the most rapeseed hectares in France, and Poitou-Charentes in the west, with both regions losing about 40,000 hectares, the ministry said.

"Sowings there were carried out late on dry soil, and then the wet autumn hampered plant emergence," it said in a monthly note on crops. Some rapeseed fields were dug up and are expected to be resown with maize or sunflowers in the spring, it added.

The ministry estimated the winter wheat area would be 2.8 percent higher at 4.96 million hectares, in a rebound from losses caused by frost last February. "Area should increase notably in the north-east regions that had been affected at the start of 2012," it said. The winter barley area will gain 9.7 percent to 1.09 million hectares in a similar recovery from the frost damage ahead of the 2012 harvest, the minister estimated.

Copyright Reuters, 2012