India will be the first major wheat-growing country to harvest the 2017/18 crop, and most of its wheat will be cut by the time the U.S. Department of Agriculture rolls out its first production estimate in May. Despite the early glimpse this should provide to the wheat market, the Indian government’s data could actually downplay the potential impact of the country’s bumper crop on global balance sheets due to some data discrepancies with USDA. India, the world’s second-largest wheat grower and consumer, is due to begin harvesting the 2017/18 crop later this month. The Ministry of Agriculture (MOA) pegs the upcoming harvest at 96.64 million tonnes, which would be an all-time high for that country according to the USDA’s records. India’s last two wheat crops were plagued with difficult weather, reducing the total output to near 87 million tonnes in each year, according to USDA. This was down considerably from the previous three years, in which production was closer to 95 million tonnes.  Some analysis groups predict that the 2017/18 wheat harvest could reach 100 million tonnes, which if realized would represent an increase on the year of up to 15 percent – much larger than MOA data implies. And this means India will likely be contributing much more heavily to world wheat supply in 2017/18 relative to the year before. Source: Reuters – see full article here

Controversy as Egyptian researchers aim for  two crops in one year

In highly publicized experiments, Egyptian researchers say they may be able to double the country’s wheat production by squeezing two growing seasons into a year. But in a country that takes its agriculture seriously, the experiments are proving extremely controversial. Egypt is the world’s largest importer of wheat and the price of bread and other wheat food products are a key source of the Egyptian public’s complaints about the cost of living. So the new research is being closely watched by government officials and citizens alike. Over four years,  under different climatic conditions, scholars in Cairo conducted experiments to cultivate wheat twice rather than once a year. “The technique of cultivating wheat twice a year depends on treating the wheat seeds before planting by cooling them for various periods of time,” said Ali Farag, who conceived of the experiments and is a researcher at the Water Resources Management Institute. “This would reduce the time crops stay in the soil to three months rather than six,” Farag said. But the idea faces severe criticism in Egypt. The Ministry of Agriculture’s Institute of Agricultural Research has issued a report attacking the experiment and calling it a threat to the future of Egypt’s wheat cultivation. The report also described the research as “unscientific” and the results “poor.” It said the experiments are not worth exhausting the soil and wasting the water. Source: Al-fanarmedia. To view full article click here