grain stockpiles

With world corn production down 4 percent, the global stockpile of grain will shrink for the sixth year in a row, said the International Grains Council on Thursday. In a monthly report, the IGC said the 2022/23 global harvest would be 1 percent smaller than last season’s record output.

In the past year, the record-large U.S. soybean stockpile shrank by 42 percent, thanks to strong demand for the oilseed and the smallest crop since 2013, said the USDA on Wednesday. Nonetheless, the Sept. 1 inventory of 523 million bushels is the fourth largest since soybeans became a major U.S. crop in the 1940s.

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.

The International Grains Council forecasts a modest decline in global grain production that will lead to a sharp reduction in the grain “carryover” at the end of 2018/19.

The bigger-than-expected corn crop in the United States is helping to drive world cereal grain production to a record for the second year in a row, said the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.

The International Grains Council sharply boosted its estimate of corn consumption in China, pointing to government measures expected to drive up industrial use of the grain 14 percent during 2017/18. The shift in Chinese consumption will affect grain stockpiles worldwide, said the IGC in its monthly Grain Market Report, with the first reduction in five years in the grain "carryover" at the end of the marketing year.

Larger corn crops in Argentina and the United States will push global grain production to the second-highest total ever, just a year after the record was set, said the International Grains Council, based in London. The global appetite for grain continues to grow, likely setting its own record, so the global stockpile will shrink by 5 percent, said the council’s monthly Grain Market Report.

The world’s grain stockpile will shrink nearly 7 percent by the end of the new marketing year, forecasts the International Grains Council. The reason, said the group, is a smaller harvest—down 3 percent—and the second year of record-high consumption.

With the world headed for record-setting wheat, corn and rice harvests, the inventory at the end of this marketing year will be the largest ever — a three-month supply that would weigh on commodity prices, said the International Grains Council. The council's index of grain and oilseed prices, "pressured by increasing heavy spot supplies," was near a five-month low, as farmers in the northern hemisphere report good overall yields.

Adverse weather in South America - harvest-time rain in Argentina and drought in Brazil - will reduce the global soybean crop by 1.5 percent in the current crop year, says the International Grains Council.

Less than a decade after a worldwide surge in food prices that began in 2008, grain bins are bursting around the globe. But the risk isn't over, says Quartz, pointing to a meeting called by the Council on Foreign Relations. A majority of the economists and policymakers at the session "believe food prices will spike again within five years."

Consumers, livestock and industry will chew through a record 1.99 billion tonnes of food and feed grains this marketing year and world grain stocks still should rise by nearly 2 percent, said the International Grains Council in its monthly Grain Market Report. With the harvest season winding down in the Northern Hemisphere, IGC estimated the grain crop will be only 1 percent smaller than the record set in 2014/15.

Global inventories of wheat and soybeans will stand at record highs at the end of the current marketing year, swollen by huge crops, said the International Grains Council in its monthly Grain Market Report.

Chinese agricultural leaders are to meet members of the UN-backed Agricultural Market Information System, created after food prices surged worldwide in 2008, to discuss access to data on Chinese grain stockpiles, says AgriMoney.