CANBERRA: Australia’s 2024/25 wheat harvest should be slightly bigger than last year’s after an increase in planted area, but barley and canola output will likely fall, analysts at Rabobank say.
Higher wheat production would add to global supply at a time when crop losses in Russia have pushed benchmark Chicago wheat futures to 10-month highs.
Australia is a major exporter of wheat, barley and canola.
The country should harvest 27.4 million tonnes of wheat in the current 2024/25 cropping season, up 5.7% from 2023/24, 10 million tonnes of barley, down 7.2% from 2023/24, and five million tonnes of canola, down 11.4% from 2023/24, Rabobank said.
That would mean wheat and canola harvests roughly in line with the average of the last five years, but barley around two million tonnes below that average.
As planting wraps up, Australia’s eastern cropping regions have plentiful moisture but the west, south and southeast have been drier.
The bank said it assumed a mid-to-late season recovery for dry regions as a La Nina weather event led to increased rainfall.
Weather phenomenon La Nina typically brings wetter weather to eastern Australia, and many forecasters predict one will emerge later in the year.
Australia’s area planted for wheat is set to rise by 961,000 ha to 13.48 million ha with barley area increasing by 210,000 ha to 4.33 million ha and canola area shrinking by 450,000 ha to 3.11 million ha, Rabobank said.
Those wheat and canola areas are 5% to 7% higher than the five-year average, while barley is around 10% lower, it said.
Western Australia’s cropping area will rise despite its dry start, according to the bank, while Queensland’s area should surge by nearly one-third, with the amount of land planted to wheat growing to its largest on record.
Most of the country’s dry cropping regions received rain in the last week, which analysts said could add one million tonnes to the wheat harvest. — Reuters
