Australia, one of the world's top wheat exporting nations, is seeing a good start to the 2011/12 crop season as grain growers accelerate planting, helped by timely rains, farmers and industry analysts say. This solid start is in stark contrast to the northern hemisphere where crops are suffering from adverse weather.
Wheat prices, which have gained 65 percent since the start of May last year, have been supported by renewed concerns over supplies as a result of dry weather in the United States, Europe and China. "Over the past week we've seen widespread rainfall across Western Australia's growing areas which have certainly improved the situation there while yesterday we've seen some very good falls across the eastern states," said Luke Mathews, an agricultural commodities strategist at Commonwealth Bank of Australia. Mathews stood by his forecast of a 24.3 million tonnes crop in 2011/12, down from a record 26.3 million tonnes harvest last season.
The previous season's crop was boosted by above average rain across eastern Australia, due to a La Nina weather event, but quality was lower than average as a wet harvest saw much of the eastern states' crop downgraded to feed grade. In Western Australia, typically the country's top exporting state, wheat production was nearly halved last season to 4.9 million tonnes as dry weather, also associated with the La Nina, shrivelled crops. Mathews said the outlook for Western Australia had improved, but added that more rain was needed to ensure a reasonable crop.
Inclement weather in various places, including Australia and the Black Sea region, cut global supplies of wheat in 2010, sending benchmark Chicago prices soaring about 47 percent during the year. This year, wet weather in the US Midwest is threatening to harm the soft red winter wheat crop and excessive rainfall in the northern Plains is delaying seedings of the high-protein US spring wheat crop. In Europe also, hot dry weather is threatening crops.
While grain growers in Australia are cranking up seeding of the 2011/12 crop which will be harvested in the closing months of 2011, some are worried that a plague of mice may hit output. "We're pretty happy with the situation because we've got our crop in on time," Neil Cooper, a crop grower in western New South Wales state, said, but added that a major threat was a mice plague across the country as a warm, wet weather had encouraged breeding. "The wheat is only just out of the ground so we won't know how bad the mice are going to hit the wheat crop but everyone is putting down bait," said Cooper.