Canada, one of the five largest wheat growers and exporters of the world, faces a huge decline in wheat production this year, says the monthly World Agricultural Production report. USDA says the crop will total 25 million tonnes, down 15 percent from 2014 and the second year in a row of sharply smaller output. Poor soil moisture in southwestern Saskatchewan and southeastern Alberta cut the overall Canadian yield by 16 percent. Statistics Canada is scheduled to update its forecasts of crop production on Thursday, “derived from remote sensing, survey and agroclimatic data sources.”
While wheat production is down in Canada, it is surging in the European Union, now forecast for the second-largest crop ever, 154.1 million tonnes, 4 percent larger than estimated in August and only 1.5 percent smaller than the record 2014 crop. The EU average yield, 5.8 tonnes per hectare, is the second-highest on record. France, the largest wheat-grower in the EU, reaped a record crop of 42.5 million tonnes, up 2.7 million tonnes from the previous estimate due to higher yields.