FAO Cereal Supply and Demand Brief
World cereal production prospects trimmed and stocks heading sharply lower in 2018/19
Latest indications from the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) continue to point to a reduced global cereal output in 2018. This will lead to negative prospects for the cereal supply outlook for the forthcoming 2018/19 marketing season.
Based on the condition of crops already in the ground and assuming normal weather for the remainder of the 2018 cropping seasons, FAO’s forecast for world cereal output this year is pegged at 2, 586 million tonnes, which is 64.5 million tonnes (2.4 percent) less than the record output in 2017.
The year-on-year decrease is due to an anticipated global reduction in maize output and a predicted decline in wheat production.
The latest forecast for cereals is down nearly 24 million tonnes from June, due to a revision of projections for wheat production in the EU along with lower projections for wheat, maize and barley production in the Russia and Ukraine.
If current production forecasts materialise, cereal output would not be sufficient to meet the expected total utilisation requirements in 2018/19 and, as a result, global cereal stocks accumulated over the past five seasons would have to be drawn down to 749 million tonnes, over 7 percent down from their opening levels.
(Source: The Food & Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations, ‘FAO Cereal Supply and Demand Brief’: http://www.fao.org/worldfoodsituation/csdb/en/)
