Canada has cut its estimate for its wheat production before a grain of its important spring crop has been sown, citing forecasts for flooding which look set to provide a significant setback to plantings.
Farm ministry Agriculture and Agri-Foods Canada also trimmed forecasts for stocks of a range o grains, including wheat ?which looks set to end 2011-12 with one of its smallest-ever stockpiles..
The wheat crop in the major grain-exporting state will hit 24.5m tonnes this year, an improvement on last year's damp-hampered crop, but 400,000 tonnes below previous hopes, AAFC said.
The reduction, which leaves output on course to fall below the five-year average of 24.8m tonnes, reflected the concerns over a wet spring sowing season raised by the prospect of melting of heavy snows onto ground already sodden by last year's rains.
"Despite higher prices, the area seeded to spring wheat area is forecast to increase by only 2% because of very wet soil conditions in some of the wheat growing areas of western Canada," the ministry said.
Nonetheless, a downgrade of 160,000 hectares, or roughly 380,000 acres, to the forecast for wheat area remains well short of the losses expected by some other observers.
Viterra last week restated a forecast of total losses across major crops of up to 4m acres, while the Canadian Wheat Board has pegged the figure at 3m-5m acres if spring conditions are not ideal.
'Higher selection rates'
The below-average harvest looks set to feed through into a further decline in wheat stocks at the close of 2011-12.
"Exports are expected to increase?because of the expected return to normal quality, and an expected increase in world trade," the AAFC
A forecast decline to 4,800 tonnes in inventories would leave them at the second-lowest in at least 50 years. The lowest was in 2007-08, in the run up to the previous spike in crop prices, when stocks fell to 4.4m tonnes.
And prospects for inventories of barley, corn and oats at the end of the marketing year have also fallen.
The estimate for barley shipments was lifted by 200,000 tonnes to 1.8m tonnes, "due to higher selection rates for malt barley", after a 2010 crop rendered by wet weather as largely of feed quality .
Oats exports "are forecast to increase due to slightly lower US oat production, and continued higher US prices", the ministry said.
