Rainfall lifts Australia’s wheat harvest by several million tons

Recent rains across key Australian wheat growing areas are likely to increase yields, adding several million tons to a crop that had been hit by dry weather and boosting the global supply outlook, analysts said.

A larger harvest in Australia, one of the world’s biggest exporters, will help to offset crop losses caused by dry conditions in Argentina and Canada, exerting downward pressure on wheat prices Wv1.

Rain across many southern regions lifted the wheat harvest outlook to 26 million metric tons from 23 million tons a few weeks ago during Australia’s driest September on record, said Stefan Meyer, a grains broker at StoneX in Sydney.

“If last month’s heat was like taking a blowtorch to Australian crops, the recent cool weather and rain has had the effect of dousing the flames,” he said.

Ole Houe at agriculture brokerage IKON Commodities said Australia was around 3% through its harvest and forecast wheat production of 28 million tons, up from a prediction of less than 25 million tons a month ago.

Analysts at Rabobank said they expected Australia to harvest 26.9 million tons of wheat.

The higher estimates are far below last season’s wheat production of 39.7 million tons, a record high for Australia, but above the 10-year average of 26.4 million tons.

In 2019, a drought year, Australia produced just 14.5 million tons of wheat.

Dry weather through much of the growing season means the quality of Australia’s crop this year is excellent, said Meyer at StoneX.

However, better yields in the wetter south will be partly offset by lower production in northern areas that remain dry, said Rod Baker at Australian Crop Forecasters, predicting a wheat harvest of around 25 million tons.

“Some of the areas that received rain have also had unseasonably late frosts,” he said. “Hard to quantify until harvest, but some crops were still in flowering stage and damage has been reported. This all takes a bit off top end yield.”

For barley, Baker said Australia’s harvest could come in around 10.1 million tons. Rabobank forecast barley production of 11.9 million tons.

Tags: Australia, wheat, crop forecast