Russia will harvest a markedly smaller wheat crop this summer due to harsh weather that will also reduce the wheat harvest in Ukraine, said the Agriculture Department on Wednesday. U.S. growers will see higher farm-gate prices for their wheat and larger exports as a result of the setbacks in the Black Sea region, said the USDA.
In a pair of monthly reports, the USDA lowered its estimate of Russia’s wheat crop to 83 million metric tons, down 5 million tons from its May estimate and 8.5 million tons smaller than the 2023 crop. With a reduced crop, Russian wheat exports would shrink to 48 million tons, an 11 percent drop from the previous year, though Russia would remain the world’s largest wheat exporter by far.
U.S. wheat exports would climb to 800 million bushels during the current marketing year, the most in four years, and the season-average price would be 50 cents higher — $6.50 a bushel — than expected a month ago, said the WASDE report. ”U.S. wheat prices are expected to be increasingly competitive with reduced exportable Black Sea supplies,” it said.
Unfavorable weather has hit all of Russia’s winter wheat regions, said USDA analysts in the World Agricultural Production circular. Several frosts in early May damaged crops on at least 1.5 million hectares (3.7 million acres), according to preliminary assessments by the Russian Agriculture Ministry. Winter wheat accounts for 70 percent of the country’s wheat production.
“In addition to the frost, the crop is further stressed by an intensifying dryness spreading across most of European Russia,” said the USDA. Satellite imagery suggests that “vegetation vigor is lower compared to last year” and yield potential is affected.
Dry spring weather is reducing the outlook for wheat in Ukraine, said the USDA, which estimated the crop at 19.5 million tons, down from 23 million tons in 2023. “The precipitation amounts in many regions have been below average since March,” it said. “Thus, the lack of adequate precipitation during the month of May further reduced the already-short moisture reserves for the flowering to filling crop.” Ukraine’s wheat exports were forecast at 13 million tons, down by 5.1 million tons from last year.
Russia and Ukraine would account for 1 of every 7 bushels of wheat grown in the world and 28 percent of the wheat on the world market this year, according to USDA figures. Wheat is the staple food of roughly 35 percent of the world’s population, said a World Bank blog.
Excessive rainfall in France prevented farmers from sowing some wheat land and created emergence problems for the wheat crop. Production, forecast at 31.7 million tons, would be 4.6 million tons below the 2023 total. “The change in France’s production lowers the overall estimated European Union wheat total to 130.5 million tons,” said the USDA. The EU is the second-largest wheat exporter in the world.
The USDA increased its estimate of the U.S. wheat crop to 1.875 billion bushels, up by 17 million bushels due to larger hard red winter wheat output, and repeated its projections for the second-largest soybean and third-largest corn crops this year. Wheat, corn, and soybean stockpiles would swell because of large crops. This year’s crops would fetch lower season-average prices than 2023’s crops, said the USDA.