Worldwide Cereal production now @2,640m tonnes

NaijaAgroNet:

The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has updated its forecast on the worldwide cereal production as at the end of 2017 to stand at 2,640 million tonnes, reports NaijaAgroNet.

This, NaijaAgroNet also discovered is 13 per cent higher than 2016 and an all-time record high.

The forecast, NaijaAgroNet gathered, has been raised by 13.5 million tonnes since December, with coarse grains driving the bulk of the increase, due largely to higher maize output expected in China, Mexico and the European Union.

Also, FAO raised its 2017 production forecasts for wheat, due to expectations of bigger harvests in Canada and the Russian Federation, and for rice, following an upward revision in China.

NaijaAgroNet reports that projected cereal utilization in the 2017/18 season was also raised, now up 1.4 per cent from 2016/17. Just as the upward revision includes a notable jump for coarse grains, whose use for livestock feed is forecast to reach an all-time high on the back of sizable increases projected for Brazil, China, the EU and Mexico.

As cereal output, NaijaAgroNet report, is seen expanding more than utilization, stocks are projected to rise above their already high opening levels, leading to a comfortable world stocks-to-use ratio of 27.7 percent, the highest since 2001/02.

In a related development the international trade volumes, are expected to contract slightly for all the major cereals except maize.

Isaac Oyimah/GEE

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