EXCELLENT WEATHER has mean that spring sowing has progressed, but it will be interesting to see how much spring barley, for instance, has been planted.

As a background to this, the global wheat harvest in 2009 was seen to be the second highest on record, and is currently estimated over 677m tonnes, the highest being 683m tonnes in 2008. High production and large stocks has created an over-supply situation on the world market.

This has led to increased competition on quality markets, with traditional third-country importers seeing larger harvests in 2009 and, therefore, requiring less wheat imports.

Given the good Northern Hemisphere harvest last year, availability from the Southern Hemisphere has been of less importance this season. Even so, the Australian crop, estimated at 22m tonnes, is of lower quality this season due to hot weather then rain during harvest. The Ozzie prime wheat protein level is at 10.3%-10.8%, down from 11% in the previous season.

One of main features of the wheat market over the course of 2009/10 so far has been the slow pace of US wheat exports. By early February, the US had exported just 18.7m tonnes of wheat. This compares to 23.01m tonnes of wheat exported by the same point in the previous season and the slow pace of US exports has been caused by the US uncompetitiveness in pricing terms.

Currently, US wheat ending stocks are estimated at 26.7m tonnes, well above the 19.2m-tonne ending stocks projected at the start of the season. The stock increase and heavy global wheat supply have been major factors for the lower prices seen recently.

Egypt remains the world’s largest quality wheat importer, with an estimated 8.8m tonnes of imports in 2009/10, compared to 9.9m tonnes in 2008/09 season.

However, due to competitively priced exports, the EU (mainly France and Germany) exported over 1m tonnes to Egypt during this period, more than 900,000 tonnes above the level exported in July-October 2008.

Russia still supplies the majority of Egypt’s quality wheat import requirements and, during the first half of 2009/10, Russian wheat accounted for 2.8m tonnes.

UK trade data suggest that between July and December, 2009, the UK had exported 950,000 tonnes of wheat. As in previous seasons, Spain remains the largest purchaser of UK wheat, accounting for more than half of UK exports so far in 2009/10, during the first half of 2009/10, Spain imported 530,000 tonnes of UK wheat.

Millers’ usage in the UK for the first half of 2009/10 is seen up by 1.4%. Total wheat milled in the UK is reported at 500,000 tonnes between July and December, imported milled wheat is seen up by 0.4%, while home-grown usage is 6.8% higher.

The increased level of home-grown usage is in line with the better quality of the 2009 UK wheat harvest.

For harvest 2010, the world wheat area is estimated to fall, with the IGC forecasting the area down 1% to 222m ha. For instance, wheat plantings in Russia and Kazakhstan are estimated at 1.5% and 3.6% lower, respectively.

But, the biggest reduction in plantings is seen in the US, where winter wheat plantings are estimated at 15m ha, down 14% on the previous year.

One reason for lower plantings is the delayed maize harvest, which kept land unavailable from sowing. The drop in wheat plantings across the globe and especially winter wheat in the US, could lead to lower availability of new crop quality wheat.