Market Morsel: Russian crop to rise to record
Market Morsel
SovEcon, a leading Black Sea agricultural markets research firm, has upped its 2022 Russian wheat crop estimate and issued the first 2022/23 wheat export forecast. Russia is the #1 world wheat exporter.
The Russian wheat crop production has been revised to a record-high 87.4 mmt from 86.5 mmt on excellent crops conditions and good inputs availability. In 2021 Russia harvested 76.0 mmt of wheat. “Weather in recent months has been friendly for winter wheat, leading to below-average winter kill. This factor fully offsets a substantial 5% decrease in the area planted last fall.
We expect the pre-harvest winter wheat area to hit 17.0 mln ha, a new all-time high. Plants in key regions, the South and the Central Black Earth look very good”.
SovEcon estimates 2022/23 Russian wheat exports at 41.0 mmt compared to 33.9 mmt in the current season, provided there are no western sanctions directly targeting food exports and further substantial escalation of the military activity in the region. Another factor that is likely to influence exports is government regulation. SovEcon expects the Russian government to set export quotas again in the second half of 2022/23, but the volume is likely to be close to export potential.
In April USDA upped its Russian 2021/22 wheat export forecast by 1.0 mmt to 33.0 mmt. First 2022/23 Russian estimates will be released in May.
