Market Morsel: Who has the worlds grain?

Market Morsel

Australia is important for grain production, and there is a lot of speculation about how this year’s crop will perform. The reality is that it is too far to have an accurate prediction other than going with averages. At the moment, the eyes are on the rest of the world, ahead of the northern hemisphere winter coming to an end.

Let’s take a look at wheat around the world.

The current projection for wheat stocks is that at the end of this season, there will be 258mmt left. This is the lowest level of stocks since 2015.

According to the USDA, world wheat stocks have been declining in recent years. If we look more specifically at the countries that export most of the world’s wheat (the top 8).

The top exporters’ stocks are expected to be 60.5mmt, a nearly 5mmt drop from last year. In general, this is a fairly stable volume and around where it has been for most of the past decade.

Importantly, when we look at where the wheat stocks are, they are heavily skewed towards two countries. India and China have 54% of the world’s wheat stocks. These stocks are unlikely to be available to the global marketplace.