World wheat production will rise for the third year in a row, with growers harvesting a record-large crop this year, say forecasts from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization and the International Grains Council. While they differ slightly on how large the new crop, months away from harvest, will be, they agree Europe will be key.
“The bulk of the growth is expected to come from the EU, where wheat plantings are forecast to recover from last year’s low level, expanding by more than 5 percent in 2021,” said the FAO on Thursday. Coupled with an increase in yields, the EU wheat crop is expected to be 9 percent larger than last season. Production in many of the other major wheat countries, including the United States, is expected to hold steady, so the world crop would total 790 million tonnes, said the UN body.
While the FAO says world wheat output will rise by 1 percent, the Grains Council projects a 2 percent increase. “Including better harvests in Europe, North Africa, and India, global wheat production is seen climbing to a new high of 790 million tonnes,” said the IGC in a preliminary outlook a week ago. The European crop fell by one-fifth last year.
Global wheat consumption could also set a record in 2021/22 because of demand for livestock feed, said the Grains Council. Supplies of corn and barley are tightening, which makes wheat an alternative feed.
Wheat is the most widely grown crop in the world and, along with rice, one of the most commonly consumed cereal grains. Grown mainly for human consumption, wheat is milled into flour and used to make bread, pasta, breakfast cereals, and crackers. The United States uses more than 1.1 billion bushels of wheat annually, and 51 pounds of every 60-pound bushel is consumed by people. The EU, China, India, Russia, and the United States are the five largest wheat producers.
World food prices rose 2.4 percent during February, the ninth month in a row for increases, said the FAO in its monthly Food Price Index, based on the price of a basket of commodities. The index is now at its highest level since July 2014. The pandemic, by disrupting food production and distribution, has been a factor in the price increases.
“The February increase was led by strong gains in the sugar and vegetable oils sub-indices, while those of cereals, dairy, and meat also rose, but by a lesser extent,” said the FAO.
Food prices have been rising twice as fast as the overall inflation rate in the industrialized world, according to the OECD, based in Paris. It said food prices were an average of 3.1 percent higher in January than a year earlier, before the coronavirus became a pandemic. The highest food inflation rates were 18.1 percent in Turkey and 12.7 percent in Australia.