Loading grain in Louisiana. Photo: Blue Water Shipping Company

GRAIN figures in the USDA’s monthly World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates (WASDE) monthly report released overnight are little changed from the February numbers issued for the current marketing year.

This is mostly because 2019/20 crops have been harvested and substantially sold.

WASDE’s global numbers reflect aggregates of local marketing years, meaning different year-end months in different countries.

Wheat

The March WASDE is practically a statistical bookkeeping task, and this year’s figures show minute changes to wheat numbers, mostly around 0.1 per cent, to confirm no major upheavals.

The estimate for global wheat production in 2019/20 has been revised up to 764.49 million tonnes (Mt) from 763.95Mt seen last month, and ending stocks at 287.14Mt and down from 288.03Mt seen in February.

Estimates for Indian and Argentinian wheat production have risen, but projections for Australia and Turkey have been revised down.

The Turkish Government’s policy to import additional duty-free wheat has encouraged export of milled flour, and will put Turkey’s wheat imports at 10.5Mt  behind only Egypt and Indonesia in 2019/20.

Global wheat production in 2018/19 was 731.46Mt , well down from 762.88Mt in 2017/18, with ending stocks in those two years at 277.57Mt and 283.53Mt respectively.

Coarse grains

Coarse grains include barley, corn, millet, oats, rye and sorghum, and the forecast for global production is virtually unchanged at 1402.8Mt.

Coasre-grain ending stocks have been forecast at 327.33Mt, including corn stocks at 297.3Mt, 500,000t up from last month.

Among minor trade changes this month, USDA has reported that China’s sorghum import total would reflect recent purchases of US sorghum.

Local marketing-year corn-export trade was lifted for shipments from Ukraine, South Africa and the EU, and lowered in respect of the 2018/19 Brazilian corn.

Source: USDA

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