USDA World Wheat Numbers

Posted by Nogger - a legend in his own mind at 15:37 | Categorized as

10/05/12 -- In their first peek into 2012/13 the USDA today gave us a world wheat crop of 677.6 MMT in the year ahead, some 17 MMT down on last year, a fall of 2.5 percent.

That's a tad higher than the numbers that the IGC and FAO had already given us - 676 MMT and 675.1 MMT respectively - but they are all still very much in the same ballpark.

Here in Europe the USDA are now estimating wheat production this year at 132 MMT, a 4% drop on last year. Other notable cuts in global production in the year that lies ahead come from Ukraine (13 MMT, down 41%), Kazakhstan (15 MMT, down 34%), Australia (26 MMT, down 12%) and Argentina (12 MMT. down 17%).

Making up for some of those losses are production increases in America (61.1 MMT, up 12%), India (91 MMT, up 5%) and Canada (27 MMT, up 7%).

Global wheat consumption is seen falling around 8 MMT next season, due to the outlook for a bumper world corn crop, which absorbs some of these lower production numbers. Even so, at 686.5 MMT the world will consume 11 MMT more wheat than it produces in 2012/13, meaning that world ending stocks for wheat are seen declining by 9 MMT to 188 MMT.

EU-27 wheat exports will decline 2 MMT from the current marketing year to 14.5 MMT in 2012/13, the lowest in five years as we lose out to more competitively priced US wheat, who's exports are seen rising 4 MMT to 31.5 MMT. Even so, lower output in Europe means that 2012/13 ending stocks will decline to 12 MMT from 13.3 MMT at the end this season.