By Krisztina Fenyo, Luiza Ilie, Gergely Szakacs and Gus Trompiz
HAJDUSZOBOSZLO, Hungary, Sept 2 (Reuters) – Standing in a field of withered maize in northeast Hungary, farmer Karoly Kovacs recalls harvests that now seem almost unimaginable.
“I could hardly believe when we reaped 17 tons a hectare back around 2010,” Kovacs said. “But then, we used to have 1,000 millimetres of rain and now, almost nothing.”
For farmers across central and eastern Europe, what was once an occasional drought has become a recurring threat. Record heatwaves and chronic water shortages are shrinking maize harvests, forcing some growers to abandon the crop and reshaping a region long seen as a pillar of European grain production.
The impact is most evident in Hungary and Romania, two key European Union maize producers where acreage has fallen sharply in recent years. Hungary, once a regular exporter, is set to import maize this year, while Romania’s exportable surplus has dwindled.
The EU’s maize harvest, typically its second-largest cereals crop, is forecast at 50.1 million metric tons this year, according to the European Commission’s late-August estimate. That would be a near two-decade low and about a fifth below the average of the past three years.
“If we see this continuity of dry summers for the next campaigns, this is a very big story for the EU if the corn acreage and/or corn yields keep decreasing,” said Gabriel Antonio, a commodity market analyst at Expana, who projects an 8% to 9% increase in EU maize imports in 2026/2027.
While Europe is the world’s fastest-warming continent, central Europe faces particularly acute pressures from heat, soil moisture deficits and water shortages, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development data show.
Romania and Hungary, where maize acreage has plummeted in recent years, perform worse than both the EU and OECD averages for soil moisture anomalies.
“This sustained decline in soil moisture has direct implications for agricultural productivity and water resource management and, therefore, food security and livelihoods,” the OECD said in an emailed response to questions.
Over the past decade, Hungary’s June and July highs have exceeded the 1961 to 1990 average by 3.1 degrees Celsius (5.6 degrees Fahrenheit), according to Reuters Climate Monitor data. Romania is close behind, with average summer highs 3 C (5.4 F) above historical norms.
Romania’s maize crop is expected to total around 8 million tons this year, having escaped the worst of this year’s European drought but still down more than half from 2018 to 2019 levels. Hungary’s estimated 2.5-million-ton harvest would be less than a third of its output during those years.
Romania’s maize exports fell to between 2.2 million and 4.7 million tons between 2023 and 2025 from more than 7 million tons around the turn of the decade, European Commission figures show. Hungary, usually an exporter, will have to import maize this year, the government said.
‘SEMI-DESERT CLIMATE’
Tamas Petohazi, chairman of the Association of Hungarian Grain Growers, said many farmers have given up the business altogether, while others have taken second jobs because family farms can no longer support them.
“We need a paradigm shift,” Petohazi said, adding the lack of rain, which forced shutdowns at nuclear reactors in Hungary and Romania last month as the Danube River receded, meant Hungary was heading for what he called a semi-desert climate.
The European Commission’s 10-year outlook for agricultural markets, published in December, put yield uncertainty for maize in eastern Europe at 18.7% in 2035, the highest among the global regions it monitors.
Kovacs said that if current climate trends persist, he may eventually abandon maize cultivation. He is considering diversifying into dry pasta production using eggs from his chickens.
‘PLANT MAIZE AND HARVEST NOTHING’
Cezar Gheorghe of consultancy AGRIColumn said climate change has been a major factor behind falling maize acreage in Romania, encouraging a shift to autumn crops and hitting small farmers especially hard.
“From 2020 until today, they plant maize and harvest nothing. Why would you keep doing it?,” he said.
“The same with medium-sized farms — they sowed, everything went well during the vegetation period, and then the drought began, which effectively scorched large swathes of the country.”
Romanian farmer Stefan Moraru has shifted to sunflowers because they require less water than maize.
“A watershed year for us was 2020. Across all our crops we suffered losses,” he said, adding the poor harvest triggered his move to invest into irrigation.
But even that strategy has its limits. A canal supplying water to his farms has been idle since mid-July.
“The problem is that nature is not co-operating,” he said.
“You can buy pivots, pumps, pipelines and irrigation equipment, but without water they become useless. Water is the key factor. Without it, all these investments amount to zero.”
(Graphics and data analysis by Ben Welsh and Jack WalkerAdditional reporting by Ovidiu Micsik. Editing by Mark Potter)
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