Today a look at wheat production in the European Union. Unlike potato production, there is no geographic area that dominates the amount of land dedicated to the staple grain. There are both northern and southern states that dedicate many hectares to it as well as eastern and central European states. Only western Europe (in the geographical sense) does not dedicate much land to the crop.

Findings

Lithuania harvests the most hectares of wheat accounting for a bit under one-fifth of the Union's total hectares dedicated to the crop, the Czech Republic comes in a close second.

The United Kingdom, Hungary, Italy, and Bulgaria each harvest only 0.02 percent of the total hectares dedicated to wheat in the EU.

Four states (Lithuania, the Czech Republic, Denmark, and Greece) are responsible for over half the hectares dedicated to wheat production.

Malta is the only state in the Union to not dedicate any land to growing the crop.

Caveats

The data is from 2016.

The borders represent the area of the state if it were based on wheat production. The location of the states on the map is irrelevant.

The map is presented in an Albers equal-area conic projection.

The choropleth classification is based on Jenks or natural breaks.

Details

It is interesting to note that the majority of wheat production in the European Union comes from relatively small-sized states. The only large state to dedicate a significant amount of land to wheat production is Sweden.

The total reported area dedicated to the crop in the European Union is 5,575,330 hectares (13,776,940 acres) or 55,753.3 square kilometers (21,526.35 square miles).

Data

State Hectares Harvested Percent of EU Total Lithuania 880,530 15.79 Czech Republic 839,710 15.06 Denmark 583,000 10.46 Greece 536,780 9.63 Latvia 479,100 8.59 Sweden 449,150 8.06 Slovakia 417,710 7.49 Austria 317,760 5.7 Belgium 215,720 3.87 Finland 215,100 3.86 Croatia 171,400 3.07 Estonia 164,500 2.95 Netherlands 127,090 2.28 Ireland 67,920 1.22 Portugal 38,200 0.69 Slovenia 31,460 0.56 Luxembourg 13,810 0.25 Cyprus 8,390 0.15 France 5,000 0.09 Germany 3,000 0.05 Spain 2,000 0.04 Poland 2,000 0.04 Romania 2,000 0.04 Bulgaria 1,000 0.02 Italy 1,000 0.02 Hungary 1,000 0.02 United Kingdom 1,000 0.02 Malta 0 0

Sources

Eurostat. 2017. "Database - Eurostat." Accessed November 26, 2017. http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/data/database.