South Australia Cuts Wheat Harvest Estimate Again - Down Another 13% From Last Month's Projections

[hatrack]

SOUTH Australia, the nation's third-largest wheat-growing state, has cut its forecast for wheat production for a second time, as drought damages crops. It is now estimated that the state will produce 4.85 million tonnes of wheat in the harvest starting this month, down 13 per cent from the 5.5 million tonnes estimated last month, Rural Solutions SA says in its latest crop report.

Primary industries officials said further rain this month was also required to avoid another reduction in the forecast yield. Harvest expectations in Australia have been scaled back since the US Department of Agriculture forecast on September 12 that the country would tie with Canada as the world's second-biggest wheat exporter.

Lower output in Australia for two years has helped to more than double wheat prices to a record.

Barley output may be 1.7million tonnes, 11 per cent lower than the month-earlier estimate of 1.9 million tonnes. South Australia is the nation's biggest barley producer.

EDIT

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22538365-5006787,00.html

[phantom power]

1. This is not good.

It might even be fair to say it's very fucking bad.

[hatrack]

2. Yeah, with austral summer just over the horizon, doubleplus ungood

Especially considering that grain carryover stocks are already at a 30-year low. This leads to interesting possibilities for next year, don't you think?

[phantom power]

3. If I'm correctly interpreting the trends...

grain reserves could easily drop to zero next year. And once that rubicon is crossed, things will be very interesting indeed.
:puke:

[progressive_realist]

4. Can you recommend good source materials regarding this trend?

I'm thinking I need to start keeping a closer eye on the situation as well. I'm becoming worried that we will be facing precipitous increases in retail food prices as soon as next year.

As opposed to the large but manageable increases we are already seeing. :(

[phantom power]

5. Just the news I read here in this forum...

My recollection is that the world is down to about 2 months of grain reserve, and it's been dropping steadily for the last 7 years. Another bad year of crops like last year seems like it could easily use up that last 2 months.

[GliderGuider]

6. Start here:

http://www.earth-policy.org/Indicators/Grain/2006_data.htm

Their data only goes up to 2006, but the 2007 grain stocks are estimated to be down from 57 days in 2006 to 53 days today. the page has a lot of good data on grain production and consumption, including a graph of the US usage of corn for ethanol.

Counting 2007 estimates, globally we've now eaten more than we've grown in 7 of the last 8 years.