How Much Maize Grows on One Hectare? EU Yields Explained (2024)

The league: EU grain maize yields per hectare

Spain grew the EU's highest grain maize yield in 2024, at 12.12 tonnes per hectare. Germany followed at 10.05, Italy at 9.97, Austria at 9.90 and Greece at 9.67 — five countries within about 2.5 tonnes of each other at the top, and the only ones above 9.5 t/ha.

The bottom of the table is where the scale of the gap shows. Bulgaria grew 3.25 t/ha and Romania 2.83, so the Spanish hectare produced 4.3 times the Romanian one in the same year. Among the 21 reporting countries the unweighted mean was 7.96 t/ha; Portugal (9.48), France and Slovenia (both 9.20) sit just below the top five.

One honest caveat before the table: there is no official EU-27 aggregate yield line for maize in this dataset. Every figure below is a member-state yield, and the yield itself is a ratio — harvested production at EU standard humidity divided by recorded cropped area — so it inherits any rounding in the recorded area. The EU harvested 58 931 thousand tonnes on 8 673 thousand hectares in 2024, an implied 6.79 t/ha that we calculate ourselves rather than quote as an official figure.

North vs south: why both cool and sunny countries rank high

The top of the maize league does not follow a simple latitude line. Spain, Italy, Greece and Portugal bring the hot, dry Mediterranean summer; Germany, grown in a far cooler and wetter climate, ranks second at 10.05 t/ha, and Austria fourth at 9.90. A cool climate is clearly no bar to a 10-tonne maize hectare if the season is long enough and water is not the binding constraint.

The decade behind the 2024 numbers shows different regional profiles. Germany climbed from 8.88 t/ha in 2015 to 10.05 in 2024 (CV of 8.2% over 2015-2024), while Greece slid from 10.59 to 9.67 (CV 4.4%) and Italy was essentially flat, 10.08 to 9.97 (CV 7.1%) — though Italy dipped to 8.33 in the drought year of 2022. Austria rose from 8.68 to 9.90 (CV 7.5%).

What the dataset cannot tell you is why. It records area, production and the derived yield — not irrigation, hybrids, soils or sowing dates. What the numbers do establish is narrow but useful: climate zone alone predicts the ranking poorly, and consistency varies more within regions than between them. Spain (CV 3.9%) is steadier than every northern entrant in the top six.

Irrigation's fingerprint in the yield data

Spain's yield series is the steadiest of any maize leader: all ten observations from 2015 to 2024 sit above 11 t/ha, in a band from 11.32 to 12.83, for a CV of just 3.9%. That regularity is the fingerprint of a crop cushioned by irrigation — though the dataset does not record irrigation directly, so the pattern is the evidence, not a logged fact.

The contrast shows up in the bad years. In 2022 EU maize production fell from 73 015 thousand tonnes in 2021 to 52 971 — a 27.5% drop. Spain's yield that year was still 11.42 t/ha; Italy fell to 8.33 and Germany to 8.40. The least buffered series are the large rain-fed ones: Romania's yield varied with a CV of 31.8% over the decade and Hungary's with 23.0%, against Spain's 3.9%.

At EU level the decade reads almost flat in net terms: 58 420 thousand tonnes in 2015 against 58 931 in 2024, a net change of +0.9%. The path was anything but flat — a peak of 73 015 thousand tonnes in 2021, the 2022 crash to 52 971, then 61 035 in 2023. The CV of the EU aggregate over 2015-2024 is 9.2%, and unlike the yield league, this total is an official EU27_2020 aggregate.

Small-plot lessons from national numbers

Romania is the efficiency lesson of the EU maize table. It recorded the largest maize area of any member state in 2024 — 2 111 thousand hectares, 24.3% of the EU total — yet grew the lowest yield, 2.83 t/ha, and finished third in production with 5 972 thousand tonnes (10.1%). France, on 1 594 thousand hectares (18.4% of EU area), grew 9.20 t/ha and led production with 14 671 thousand tonnes, a 24.9% share.

Put hectare beside hectare, the ranking is decided by yield, not area. Spain farmed only 289 thousand hectares — 3.3% of EU maize area — but at 12.12 t/ha it still produced 3 500 thousand tonnes (5.9% of the EU crop). Poland, with 1 277 thousand hectares (14.7%) and 7.22 t/ha, took 15.7% of production on 14.7% of the area, roughly proportional. For a smallholder the message is direct: a small plot managed toward the high, steady yields is worth more than a large one dragged down by the low end.

Two caveats keep this lesson honest. National yields are averages — a single field with good soil and timely water can beat them, and a bad year can halve them (Romania's yield CV of 31.8% is the widest in the top group). And because yield divides production by recorded area, it carries the rounding of the area figure with it, so small year-to-year wiggles may be reporting artefacts rather than agronomy.

Where the data comes from and how to explore it

Every figure in this article comes from Eurostat's apro_cpsh1 dataset, which records harvested production at EU standard humidity, recorded cropped area, and the yield derived from them, crop by crop and country by year. Production totals for the EU-27 are official aggregates published by Eurostat; for maize yield, no such aggregate exists, so each league table here is built member state by member state.

Reporting completeness varies, and maize is the thinnest case. Twenty-one member states reported a 2024 maize yield — the smallest reporting set among the six crops we cover (wheat and barley have 26, potatoes 26, triticale 25, sugar beet 20) — so five member states are absent from the league, and the 7.96 t/ha figure quoted above is an unweighted mean of the reporters, not an EU average.

To explore further, open the dataset in the Eurostat databrowser (link below), filter to crop C1500, and compare a country's area, production and yield series side by side. The ratios you can derive yourself — production per hectare, shares of the EU total, decade changes — are exactly the ones this article used. Keep the two standing caveats in mind: yield inherits area rounding, and totals can be revised in later releases.

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