Market Morsel: ABARES – Barley
Market Morsel
At EP3 we have covered barley in a considerable depth of detail, and most of it hasn’t been positive. The ABARES report does provide some positivity in terms of production.
The 2020 national barley crop has won the silver medal, at 12mmt. The golden year was 2016 at 13.5mmt.
At present we are still experiencing reverberations from the 2016 crop. During 2016, Australia had a huge surplus which resulted in low barley pricing levels. This barley ended up in China, which subsequently lead to accusations of anti-competitive dumping.
On a state by state basis NSW (+522kmt), VIC (+391kmt) and SA (+200kmt) all experienced gains in the forecast between September and December.
The export-focused WA has seen production forecast to fall 350kmt since September. ABARES expect production of 3.6mmt, versus GIWA at 3.5mmt.
Australia has some initial trades of barley into Saudi Arabia, which is a good start. It is likely with such a substantial crop that end stocks will remain high at the start of the 2021/22 harvest.
The national barley yield is forecast at 2.72mt/ha, only narrowly missing the average yield in 2016 of 2.79mt/ha.