France boosted its claim to second place in the world wheat exporters' table by adding 290,000 tonnes to its estimate for shipments this season, thanks to bumper demand from the Middle East and North Africa.
The European Union's top wheat grower will export nearly 19.2m tonnes of the grain in 2010-11, FranceAgrimer, the French farm office, said, raising its forecast for shipments for a fifth successive month.
The estimate is 2m tonnes more than the country shipped in 2009-10, and more than that the market expects to be exported by Canada and Russia, which, after weather-damaged harvests, have fallen behind France in the exporters' table.
Indeed France has, thanks to its geographical proximity, been a particular beneficiary of demand shifted from Russia, which imposed a ban on grain exports after the worst drought on record ravaged its crops.
Big buyers
FranceAgrimer said that the upgrade to its estimate had been driven by heavy purchases by Algeria, Egypt and Yemen, as North African and Middle Eastern countries boosted grain imports to keep a cap on food prices, amid civil unrest in the region.
The bureau said that Yemen's quest for French grain has also been spurred by the drop in quality of wheat from Australia, the default supplier, where the rains which ensured bumper yields this year also let to significant downgrades of milling grain to feed.
France now looked on course to export 12.6m tonnes of grain to buyers outside the European Union, 500,000 tonnes more than expected last month.
However, the upgrade was in part offset by a weaker forecast for shipments within the EU.
Stocks estimate
FranceAgrimer also raised by 250,000 tonnes, to 32.8m tonnes, its estimate for the French harvest last year.
The impact of the revisions was to leave the forecast for stocks at the close of 2011-12 only marginally lower, at just under 2.2m tonnes.
