Wheat !

[bucket]

Send the wheat to Africa there are 20 million starving .....thar may get rid of the surplus unless that's not the goal of food production?

[farmaholic]

Can't send durum as food aide....its toxic poison! All 1.75-2 ppm of it you know! YAWN.....

[bigzee]

I grow durum as a cereal, but decided to put some red wht in this yr. Hope it will bring decent return! Durum as always yielded more and paid more, but with fuzz problems mounting thought I would spread out some of the risk. Wht can get fuzz but durum is more susceptible.

[AlbertaFarmer5]

Few problems in Europe weather wise but fact remains theres about 1 and half years production of wheat in the world at the moment maybe 1.25

This is a topic that always frustrates me. Why is having reserves of a highly nutritious product which is a staple in humans diets( and animals), stores indefinitely and is needed as seed to start over again EVER considered to be burdensome?

I get that the market needs to send the signal to farmers to slow down or we would eventually have decades of excess, but is a year and a half of supply really burdensome? Crops failed for an entire year after mt Tambora, and didn't fully recover even after two years. There have been droughts that lasted for decades and even centuries. The little ice age caused crop failures and mass starvation for centuries. In the modern era of monocrops and international travel, disease could easily wipe out production worldwide for years on end. According to the experts right now, the world is on the brink of a major climate catastrophe, either warming or cooling depending on who you ask, but either side predicts mass crop failures to result. But having slightly more than a years supply of wheat is burdensome?

I realize that no trader is going to sit on a few contracts of wheat waiting for a once in a millenia event to make his fortune. I don't trust the incompetence of government to manage it. Alot of farmers already store for better prices, a few religious cults store food for the immenent disaster they are promised. Otherwise, I have no answer of how surplus should be stored for a rainy day, but the prospect of most of humanity starving after back to back crop failures seems uneccessary, when you could stock up on wheat at these prices? What would a decades supply of wheat or flour cost for an average family?

Edit to add, the value of one year of world wheat production (roughly 200 Billion USD by my math another source is about 110 Billion) is comparable to one days trading on the NYSE. Or about 80 days of US debt accumulation. SO stockpiling is not unweildly cost wise.

[farming101]

The most recent estimate is for the world to go through about 741 MMT of wheat this marketing year.
Ending stocks are forecast at around 252 MMT

The above statement is misleading because as has been stated wheat is being harvested around the world more or less continuously. All estimates taken to get a handle on the world wheat situation are based on moving targets.

The WASDE takes a snapshot of the situation at one point in time.

What does make a difference is how comfortable major wheat importing countries are with their stock levels and ease of replacing them. Also the fact that US wheat supplies are historically large and that happens to be where some of the major wheat exchanges are makes a difference. Russian wheat supplies are forecast higher for 2016-17 too. Russia could be the world's single biggest wheat shipper this year.
China's wheat stocks estimates are much higher. Very near to one year's worth of use in store. I have argued this shouldn't matter as much as it does but nothing to be done about it. And the fact is their imports are growing in the face of larger stocks. Maybe the stocks are not keeping too well?
Currency values and a country's domestic economies influence exports/imports.

Some farmers do hold wheat back but that gets tiresome.

[furrowtickler]

Interesting , just had a market manger hit for HRSW , October for $6.75.
Not a bad place to start
As I look outside at a 1/2 ft of wet snow , no more pricing for a while lol

[malleefarmer]

there is a mountain of unsold export grain in Australia my neighbour speaking to on weekend has not sold anything except canola.Awaiting higher prices

maybe it should read stocks are 25% higher only going on what a respected anyalist has said here in aust.

he claims there are stocks in south America that are not factored in.