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YEAR ROUND COMMENT ON THE GLOBAL GRAIN AND OILSEEDS MARKETS

 

VIEW FROM THE INDUSTRY: WHEAT HARVEST PROJECTIONS IN RUSSIA


Published September 2019 by Dan Basse, President, AgResource

 

Hear more from Dan at Global Grain Geneva, where he will be speaking.

 

As of Sep 09, Russia had harvested 65.5 MMT of wheat and the cumulative yield averaged 3.15 MT/HA. It is estimated that 74% of Russia’s wheat area (both winter and spring crops) had been harvested. A year ago, 68% of wheat area had been harvested, and yields at that time averaged 3.22 MT/HA. The chart below compares this year’s weekly cumulative average wheat yields (red line) to the previous five years. Note that, as the harvest progresses, the cumulative average yield declines. That is because harvest begins first with higher-yielding winter wheat before concluding with the lower-yielding spring wheat.

 

The data has been scaled so that yields are displayed based on “stage of harvest”. We believe that comparing this week’s cumulative average yield with previous year’s (when 74% of the area had been harvested) can be indicative of the year-to-year differences that can be expected in final wheat yields. This year, yields are running 1.9% ABOVE last year. USDA is projecting that final yield will be 0.7% LESS than last year. This result suggests that USDA’s yield (and therefore total crop projection) is too low given the yield reports to date.

Besides comparing this year’s cumulative average yield to last year, there are two other ways of projecting final yields. One method is to compare the current yield to the 5-year average ratio of current-yield-to-final-yield. On average, the cumulative average wheat yield, when 74% of crop area has been harvested, is 116% of final yield (range 114%-120%). Using that ratio implies that the current cumulative average yield of 3.15 MT/HA implies a final average yield of 2.71 MT/HA. That would be 0.4% below last year’s final cumulative average yield of 2.72 MT/HA as reported by the Russian AgMinistry. USDA’s yield estimates based on “clean” weight was 2.70 MT/HA. If this year’s final cumulative average yield is 2.71 MT/HA, this would lead to a final wheat crop of about 73.27 MMT, about 270,000 MT above the USDA’s latest projection.

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