Use of Oats Continues to Grow

About half of the grain harvested from Finnish fields is sold by farms either to cereal traders or directly for industrial use. In 2014, barley was the highest quantity grain that farms sold to the markets, with sales amounting to 920 million kilos. Purchases for feed barley increased one-third on the previous year. 660 million kilos of wheat entered the market, representing a 11-per cent increase on the previous year. At 620 million kilos, purchase figures for oats were quite similar, increasing 17 per cent year on year. Rye purchases increased by a quarter, at a total of 44 million kilos.

Most of the Cereals go to the Food and Feed Industry

In 2014, the food industry used a total of 430 million kilos of cereals and the feed industry used 620 million kilos. Other industrial sectors used a total of 310 million kilos of cereals, slightly more than in the previous year. Other uses include malting and the production of ethanol, starch, glue flour and enzymes.

The most commonly used cereal in industry was barley, totalling 560 million kilos. Almost half of the amount was used for feed production. Only a small amount of barley was used for food production, at 14 million kilos. The use of cereals in both feed and the food industry remained at about the same level as in the previous year. Other uses for barley amounted to 300 million kilos, representing a slight increase from the levels of 2013.

A total of 440 million kilos of wheat was used for food and feed production in 2014, of which 250 million kilos was used for food production and 190 million kilos for feed production.

The industrial use of oats continued to grow. In 2014, a total of 270 million kilos of oats was used, the increase being 11 per cent on 2013 and 27 per cent on 2012. Most of the oats, at slightly over 190 million kilos, were used for animal feed – in fact, the use of oats for feed saw a year-on-year increase of almost 8 per cent. 80 million kilos of oats were used for food production, almost 13 million kilos more than in the previous year.

Rye was mainly used by the food industry. The amount of rye used, at 87 million kilos, was down by five million kilos on the previous year.

Cereal stocks

At the end of 2014, trade and industry stockpiles contained nearly 530 million kilos of cereals, of which oats accounted for 190 million kilos (36 per cent), barley 140 million kilos (27 per cent), wheat 140 million kilos (27 per cent) and rye 53 million kilos (10 per cent).

Tables related to the statistics are available online at www.agriculturalstatistics.fi.

Background to the statistics

The information on cereal purchases and their entry into the market is collected on a quarterly basis from all companies in Finland that buy cereals or rape/turnip rape directly from farms. Information on the use of domestic and foreign cereals is collected on a quarterly basis from the food and feed industries and other industrial sectors using cereals. The stockpile information on domestic and foreign cereals is collected biannually from all companies that have cereals in stock at the end of June or December.