Poland harvests fewer potatoes, onions and carrots

Poland is harvesting clearly fewer potatoes, onions and carrots this year than last year. The Polish statistics office GUS estimates the potato harvest at around 5.9 million tonnes, 15.4% smaller than last year. For onions, the estimate is 574,000 tonnes. That is more than 58,000 tonnes or 9.2% less than last year. The carrot harvest is shrinking by 15% to 520,000 tonnes. For potatoes, the decline is even greater. GUS expects a harvest of around 5.9 million tonnes. That is 15.4% less than last year. The statistics office also mentions an area of around 200,000 hectares and an average yield of 31.3 tonnes per hectare. Based on the total volume and the average yield, the area comes to around 189,000 hectares. That is reasonably in line with the area estimate of 185,120 hectares earlier this year based on Arimr data, the Polish equivalent of the Dutch Combined Declaration for the CAP. In line with MARS report The forecast yield per hectare differs little from the indication published by the European research institute JRC in the September MARS report. According to that estimate the yield in Poland this year will be 31.5 tonnes per hectare. It is notable that this estimate was higher than in the previous months, when it was assumed to be just over 30.1 tonnes per hectare. This does show that the potatoes started growing better after the rainfall in July. That means Poland is also achieving a harvest that is slightly better than normal. The five year average in Poland is 30.7 tonnes per hectare. The yield is still lower than in 2025, when an average of 32.7 tonnes per hectare was harvested. Cold and dry start The lower potato yields compared with last year are linked to a difficult growing season. Conditions were especially unfavorable in spring. Cold weather and a lack of rainfall slowed crop development. Later, growing conditions improved due to rainfall, but the differences between regions remained large. It was not only the total amount of rain that played a role. Its distribution was also unfavorable. In various parts of Poland, the moisture deficit persisted, while elsewhere a lot of rain fell in a short time. Combined with high temperatures, this meant that the potatoes were not able to realize their yield potential everywhere. Rain does not make up the delay Spring was also difficult for open field vegetables. Low temperatures and insufficient soil moisture delayed development. Rain later in the season brought improvement but could not fully make up the delay everywhere. This is reflected in the onion estimate of 574,000 tonnes. It is notable that the decline in onions and carrots is considerably larger than in other vegetables. Total Polish production of open field vegetables is estimated at about 3.9 million tonnes. That is 4% less than last year. The onion estimate is a fraction lower than the 575,000 tonnes forecast at the end of July. The difference for carrots is larger. There, the harvest is shrinking less than was predicted less than two months ago. In July, a carrot harvest of 509,000 tonnes was expected. That does not alter the fact that the carrot harvest is much lower than in previous years. It is and remains by far the smallest harvest in about ten years. In 2018, the harvest was more than 200,000 tonnes larger than now. That is mainly because a much larger area of carrots was grown then. Since then, the area has shrunk to around 16,000 hectares, which is about 6,000 hectares less than in 2018. The fact that the area has decreased also plays a role for onions, although much less than for carrots. In 2024, onions still saw a significant expansion to more than 25,000 hectares, but by now that has fallen again to about 22,000 hectares. Compared with two years ago, production is about 100,000 tonnes lower.Satellites should give a better picture of the area GUS is trying to further refine its harvest estimates with satellite data. The traditional estimates are built up from municipal level by GUS experts, who use field observations among other things. In addition, administrative data and satellite images are used to determine the size and location of crops more accurately, especially.For 2026, GUS has made a separate satellite estimate for 37 crops for this purpose. It uses radar images from Sentinel-1 and optical images from Sentinel-2 and Sentinel-3. The images are analyzed with remote sensing and artificial intelligence. GUS mentions, among other things, deep learning techniques and the AI model Presto developed by NASA Harvest. The technology is used not only to determine where crops are located. For potatoes, among others, GUS also makes forecasts of yield per hectare and assesses the condition of the crop. In this way, the satellite data form an additional source of information alongside the observations of the regional experts. Satellite observations are not flawless, however. Small plots in particular are more difficult to identify accurately. GUS previously pointed out that the spatial resolution of Sentinel images creates limitations for small agricultural plots. That problem mainly occurs in southeastern Poland, where the field pattern is relatively small scale.