Russian wheat crop outlook bright, pressures prices
Russian export prices for wheat fell for the third week in a row due to a strong crop outlook, analy…Russian export prices for wheat fell for the third week in a row due to a strong crop outlook, analysts said on Monday. Russia, one of the world's key wheat exporters via the Black Sea, is likely to harvest 57.5 million tonnes of wheat in 2014, IKAR, a leading agriculture consultancy, said in a note.
"The forecast was upgraded (from a previously expected 56.3 million tonnes) thanks to higher yields in several regions," Dmitry Rylko, the head of IKAR, added. Russian prices for new wheat crop with 12.5 percent protein content were down $2 to $242 per tonne at the end of last week, IKAR said.
The quote was on a free-on-board (FOB) basis in the Black Sea compared with a week earlier. FOB prices for the same protein levels in the Azov Sea were flat at $217 per tonne. Russia harvested 33.2 million tonnes of wheat from 36 percent of the area with an average yield of 3.66 tonnes per hectare as of July 25, the latest data from the Agriculture Ministry showed.
That was up from the 27.8 million tonnes harvested with an average yield of 3.04 percent on the same date a year earlier, the ministry said. From the start of this 2014/15 marketing year on July 1 to July 25 the country exported more than 2 million tonnes of grains, including 1.6 million tonnes of wheat. As for other crops, SovEcon agricultural consultancy said Russian export prices for sunflower oil edged down by $10 to $830 per tonne on an FOB basis in the Black Sea. The white sugar price index in Russia's south was up $25 at $847 a tonne last week, IKAR said.