IGC: World grain production in 2020/21 remains lower In its February 2021 edition, the International Grain Council (IGC) only slightly corrected the world grain harvest compared to the last estimate at the end of January 2020 to 2,216 million t. Worldwide consumption is estimated at 2,222 million t . The final stocks thus remain at 611 million t. The global supply figure drops to 27.5% final inventory of consumption. If China is left out of the equation because of its high stocks but small exports, the figure for the rest of the world is 15.6%, significantly lower than 4 years ago at around 18%. The supply situation on the global wheat market is still estimated to be high. Global production of 773 million t is compared to consumption of 756 million t.The closing stocks remain unchanged. This also applies to the case of excluding China, albeit at a lower level. The result in the wheat sector is characterized on the one hand by poor harvests in the EU, Ukraine, USA and Argentina ; but the doubling of the Australian harvest and above-average results in Russia and India more than make up for it. On the other hand, significant losses compared to earlier estimates are confirmed in the corn sector. The global harvest is estimated at 1,134 million t and consumption at 1,163 million t. The ending stocks of 268 million t remain unchanged. . If you exclude China again, an arithmetical final stock of only 86.5 million t remains. This corresponds to less than 10% of consumption . This is critical because the cushion for unforeseen supply bottlenecks is unusually small.The cause of this tight market situation in the corn sector is, on the one hand, significant reductions in harvests in the USA, Brazil, Argentina, Ukraine and the EU . In addition, the scarce situation is fueled by the tripled corn imports from China in the past two years. The sensitive stock exchange prices have risen correspondingly steeply. In Chicago , corn prices have increased by around 23% since mid-December 2020, in Paris the corn prices have climbed from just under € 190 / t to around € 220 / t . Scarce and expensive maize is increasingly directing more wheat into the feed troughs . The consequence is also a corresponding increase in wheat prices . In Paris , prices have risen from € 200 / t to the current € 240 / t since mid-December 2020. In Chicago , wheat prices rose 13% over the same period.The forward rates beyond March 2021 show no significant increases.
