Aussie Wheat Exports

[Zaphod]

Clearly, near-record exports show that deregulation was a disaster for Aussie farmers (sarcasm).

Sept 8 (Reuters) - Wheat exports from Western Australia, Australia's top grain exporting state, are approaching
record levels, helped by Iran returning to the global wheat market and solid demand from traditional customers such as Indonesian flour millers.
Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd (ANZ.AX) said on Tuesday that the state's wheat exports could reach 8.4 million tonnes in the marketing year ended September, just short of the record nine million tonnes exported in 2003/04.
Exports for the first 10 months of the marketing year totalled about 7.2 million tonnes. This came after Australia's wheat export industry was liberalised last year, ending a
monopoly over exports held by AWB Ltd <AWB.AX>, the former Australian Wheat Board.
This year grain trading firms such as Cargill Inc [CARG.UL], Glencore International and Louis Dreyfus joined AWB in exporting wheat through export terminals operated by West Australia's
farmer-owned CBH Group.
"We've had a lot of new marketers aggressively marketing the crop and that created some logistical problems but these numbers do show that CBH was still able to export grain at record
levels," said Tony Smith, a trader at Perth-based grain trading firm Plum Grove.

[Fransisco]

And I guess because now there is so little buisness going on in wheat they've had to set up their own wheat futures contract.

September 7, 2009
The stock exchange says it will list Western Australia Wheat (WAW) futures from next week.

Options on the futures contracts would be tradeable from Tuesday, September 15, and the first contract maturity to be listed will be January 2010, the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) said in a statement.

"The listing of the WAW contract follows a record level of grain market activity for the month of August, when more than 600,000 tonnes of Australian grain and oilseed futures contracts traded on ASX," it said.

It said since the liberalisation of Australian wheat exports from July 1 last year, there has been a desire for an improved method to facilitate price recovery and manage risk.

"The WAW futures contract, which is based on the Kwinana track market, will service the risk management and price discovery needs of all industry participants involved in the export of Australian milling wheat," the exchange said.

"The WAW contract is a natural extension of the existing ASX Grain Futures and Options contract suite," it said.

[Kodiak]

So are you to believe? Reuters and the Aussies, or Dr. Spin (Stienke) from the Department of Doublespeak at 423 Main?

[Fransisco]

We know its true because the wheat board says its so.