Australia’s wheat harvest around 2 million tons bigger than expected

Australia has produced around 2 million metric tons more wheat in the 2024/25 season than was estimated during the harvest, easing concerns that global supplies will tighten and exerting downward pressure on prices, analysts said.
Australia is the world’s fourth-biggest wheat exporter. Benchmark Chicago wheat futures ZW1! have struggled to rise much from a four-year low reached last year due to ample supply.
Four analysts polled by Reuters said they had lifted their harvest estimates by between 1 million and 3 million metric tons once the full crop was in.
Their estimates now range from 32 million tons to 35.5 million tons, up from 29 million-34.5 million they predicted in November. Their estimates are all above the Australian government’s projection of 31.9 million tons issued in December.
Yields in Western Australia, one of the country’s biggest cropping regions, massively exceeded expectations, the analysts said.
Not much rain fell in Western Australia before and during the growing season but what rain there was came at the right times, while temperatures were benign and a decline in sheep numbers boosted the planted area, they said.
“We had Australia’s wheat exports at 22 million tons but there’s probably now an exportable surplus of 24 million tons,” said Rod Baker at Australian Crop Forecasters in Perth.
Large amounts of Australian feed wheat have been sold to markets in Southeast Asia, but exports from the country’s east have so far been slow, with farmers prioritising sales of higher-margin crops such as chickpeas, Baker said.
“Because of the bigger Aussie crop, wheat prices have dropped down to find that feed demand,” said an analyst at a major grain trader who asked not to be named as he did not have permission to talk to the media.
“I think prices will stay pretty flat,” he said.
Source: Reuters