Friday, October 10, 2008

U.S. Department of Agriculture's Supply/demand Report Raises 2008-09 Wheat Carryout Estimate

The U.S. Department of Agriculture's supply/demand report on wheat carryout surprised a number of industry analysts, as they were looking for carryout to fall, as overseas demand and increased usage for feed generated the assumption carryout would decrease.

On the contrary, government estimates for 2008-09 wheat carryout increased from 574 million bushels to 601 million.

The major reason for all this is even with increased demand and domestic usage, wheat production has been so high that it offset the other two factors.

With acreage for wheat use already expanded for the 2008-09 season based on high wheat prices, it will be a challenge to maintain those prices as production increases even more than this year.

According to the USDA, global wheat production is estimated at 680.2 million tons, a record crop.

All of this isn't a big surprise of course, as we all knew there was going to be a huge crop, the surprise is in the increase of the carryout rather than decline.

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