Record-high demand for grain during the 2019/20 marketing year will draw down world grain reserves to their lowest level in five years, said the International Grains Council on Thursday. It would be the third straight year of declines in global carryover stocks despite strong production.
Wheat, corn, barley, and rice production is expected to rise in 2019/20, said the IGC in its monthly Grain Market Report. “Despite increased output, overall availabilities will edge only slightly higher owing to the smallest opening stocks in three seasons. Increases for food, feed, and industrial uses are envisaged to propel total consumption to a new high. … Amid record demand and only a minor supply expansion, a third successive depletion of global stocks is predicted, to a five-year low of 588 million tonnes.”
The global soybean harvest was a record 362 million tonnes in 2018/19, and the new crop is forecast to be nearly as large, 361 million tonnes. “Amid expectations for gains in [livestock] feed uptake, total use is seen rising further although the outlook is highly tentative given policy and demand-side uncertainties in China,” said the IGC. China, the world’s largest soybean importer, is in the midst of a trade war, which is cutting its imports, and an epidemic of a swine disease that is destroying part of its national hog herd.