London wheat recovered to its highest for more than two weeks after a farmers' survey showed that England may have bucked Europe's trend of a bumper crop this year, with production dropping by nearly 20%.

The wheat crop in England, Europe's third-biggest producer, will drop 3m tonnes to 12.9m tonnes, leaving it well below the five-year average, the National Farmers' Union said.

"That looks a bit lower than people were expecting, even though it was a bit of a stop-start harvest," a London trader told Agrimoney.com.

Hugh Schryver at Glencore described the data as "bullish", and 500,000-700,000 tonnes below trade estimates for the crop.

The 12.9m-tonne harvest would be in line with that in 2003, and has not been lower since 2001, an NFU spokesman said.

London wheat for November closed £2.50 higher at £97.50 a tonne, its best close since September 1. Paris wheat ended up E1.25 at E121.25 a tonne.

A decline in sterling to a four-month low against the euro was also viewed as supporting London wheat.

Catalogue of challenges

Harvests in many of other European countries, have remained near last year's huge crops, with the harvest in France, the top-ranked producer, expected to drop by 1.1%, and Germany forecasting  a 3.5% drop in output.

The overall European Union wheat harvest is pegged by the US at 138.5m tonnes, down 8.4% year on year.

The NFU said that the weak UK data reflected drops in both yields and sowings.

Government statistics on Thursday reported plantings down 13% at 1.7m hectares this year, citing "difficult" planting conditions.

NFU combinable crops chairman Ian Blackhouse said that growers had suffered "a difficult autumn planting in 2008 after one of the wettest summers on record, a very dry spring and delays to ripening and harvest by yet more summer rains in 2009".

However, quality was reported as "good" with "reasonable protein levels and good specification achieved by wheat growers across the country".