Record-low planting of winter wheat and recent reports on harvests and yields “indicate a sharp decline in winter wheat production” in 2017/18, according to the USDA’s Economic Research Service. The May Wheat Report projected a 25 percent fall in production of U.S. winter wheat, the mainstay for milling flour for bread and pastries.
It said that with reduced planting of spring wheat, also used in bread making, and durum wheat, used mainly in pasta, overall wheat production is forecast to fall nearly 500 million bushels from a year earlier. However, exports are expected to decline by only 5 percent in the 2017/18 marketing year. And robust sales this month led to an increase in 2016/17 exports, now forecast at 1.035 billion bushels, making the United States the world’s top wheat exporter in the current marketing year.
Blizzards and heavy snow hit western Kansas, a key wheat-producing region, in late April. “We lost the Western Kansas wheat crop this weekend. Just terrible,” tweeted Justin Gilpin, chief executive of the grower-funded Kansas Wheat Commission, at the time.
Meanwhile, despite record-high acreage, U.S. production of soybeans in 2017/18 is expected to decline to 4.255 billion bushels from 4.307 billion in 2016/17, the USDA said. It blamed lower yields. “The combination of this output with unusually large carryover stocks would result in a record 4.7-billion-bushel supply. Abundant supplies could propel U.S. soybean exports for 2017/18 to an all-time high of 2.15 billion bushels, well above the revised 2016/17 forecast of 2.05 billion,” the USDA said.
Global soy production is projected to fall 1 percent. Brazil’s production is expected to decline, while Argentina’s may plateau. Although China is growing ever more soybeans, Chinese imports are still projected to increase in 2017/18 to 93 million tons from a revised 2016/17 forecast of 89 million tons, the USDA said.