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2023/24 wheat harvest outlooks ‘diminishing week by week’
“For the 2023/24 marketing year, global [wheat] harvest outlooks are diminishing week by week,” observes the Stratégie Grains’ world grains report, published on 15 June.
Climate is the main driver of that downward trend. In the US and Canada, the spring wheat planting is almost finished, but soil moisture is on the low side. This situation convinced the Stratégie Grains analysts that a slight reduction in projections for North American wheat was in order, despite the expectation of some rain in coming weeks.
However, this is not the only region where the wheat crop is being evaluated downward: parts of the European harvest are looking to be in trouble as well. “After the new reduction applied this month, the 2023 Spanish harvest is quite simply the worst since records began,” observes Strategie Grains.
Beyond the catastrophic Spanish situation, the report also notes that northern European countries including the Baltic States and Denmark are also seeing deteriorating conditions. “If there is no improvement in the next few days, we would expect further significant reductions to harvest potentials,” it warns, although adding that production outlooks in other EU states such as France and Romania have increased month on month thanks to more favourable conditions.
Finally, the report’s wheat production outlook was influenced by the confirmation of the presence of an El Niño event. “This month, we have already reduced expected yield potentials in Australia given the devastating effects that this climatic phenomenon can have on wheat production – albeit only slightly at this stage, as the phenomenon’s intensity can vary substantially,” states Stratégie Grains
As a consequence of this, combined with expectations regarding demand from the animal feed and human/industrial sectors, Stratégie Grains now projects ending global stocks for wheat in the 2023/24 marketing year to come in slightly lower than those for the 2022/23 year, as opposed to slightly higher.
Meanwhile, the stocks-to-use ratio on the world market in 2023/24 at 30.1%, down 1.2 point compared with 2022/23, and just 0.8 point below the 5-year average.
“Against this backdrop, our current world balance sheet points to situation of delicate equilibrium,” it concludes.
