5.1 CropWatch food production estimates

Methodological introduction

Table 5.1 presents the first estimate by the CropWatch team of global maize, rice, wheat and soybeans production in 2019. It is issued at a time when many winter crops in the northern hemisphere are still growing and summer crops are in very early stages, or even to be planted; in the southern hemisphere the harvest of the summer season/monsoon season has been completed. Updates will be published in the August 2019 and November 2019 CropWatch bulletins. 

The estimate is based on a combination of remote-sensing models (for major commodities at the national level) and statistical trend-based projections for minor producers and for those countries which will harvest their crops later during 2019, for which no directly observed crop condition information is as yet available. In Table 5.1 below, the percentage of modelled global production varies according to crops: 18% for maize, 56% for rice, 71% of wheat (most of it being northern hemisphere winter wheat) and 39% for soybeans. When considering numbers of countries, the percentages are much smaller: 7%, 8%, 13% and 1%, respectively. While the percentage of countries will increase only marginally in the next bulletins, the share of modelled production will gradually increase and reach to 80% to 90% in the final bulletin of the year that will be issued in November. 

The 41 countries for which production estimates are provided are described in detail in chapter 3 while a whole chapter is devoted to China (Chapter 4). The 41 + 1 countries are referred to conventionally as the “Key Targeting Countries”. “Others” include the 142 countries from Albania, Algeria, Armenia [...] to Venezuela, Yemen and Zimbabwe. The total output for “other” countries was obtained by adding national projections for 2019 rather than projecting the sum. The reason for doing so is that countries sometimes phase out crops for a variety of reasons (e.g. soybean in Macedonia or Syria) and production projections that turn negative can be set to zero. This effect remains hidden when sums are projected.  

The calibration of production model is crop-specific, i.e. based on different crop masks for each crop and that, for each crop and country, both yield variation and cultivated area variation are taken into account when deriving the production estimates. The key targeting countries represent at least 80% or production and 80% of exports. 

CropWatch production estimates differ from other global estimates by the use of geophysical data in addition to statistical and other reference information such as detailed crop distribution maps. 

Production estimates

CropWatch estimates the global 2019 production of the major commodities at 1005 million tonnes of maize, up 0.7% over 2018, 731 millions for rice (up 1.1%), 733 million tonnes of wheat (a 1.5% increase) and 331 million tonnes of soybeans, a 1.2% increase over last year’s output. The current estimate is one of the most optimistic issued by CropWatch over the recent cropping seasons, in that all crops show positive variations compared with the previous campaign.

Table 5.1: 2019 cereal and soybean productions estimates in thousands tonnes. All the national production values in the table of remote sensing model based estimates while the global production was projected by adding up the model-based production and trend-based model for all other countries.  Δ is the percentage of change of 2019 production when compared with corresponding 2018 values

Maize

Countries that experienced large production increases include mostly Argentina (+7%) and Mexico (+8%) as well as three South-east Asian countries including Bangladesh (+8%), Myanmar (+9%) and Vietnam where the estimated increase reaches 12%, the highest national increase, equivalent to about 624,000 tonnes. Vietnamese maize exports have fluctuated a lot over the last ten years, from 100 to 50,000 tonnes. It is likely that the country will make more maize available internationally. In Argentina, the increased production represents 3.6 million tonnes while Brazil, another traditional maize producers, stayed approximately at the level of the previous season (+1%), at the same level as Angola and Indonesia. 

All countries with a significant drop in maize production are located in Africa, starting with Egypt (-1%) and Mozambique (-2%). The regions of southern and eastern Africa experienced difficult conditions including drought and excess precipitation associated with two tropical cyclones. As a rule, the effect of drought is more severe than cyclones because the impact of the second is limited in space, even if it can be very destructive. South Africa is the main maize producer in the region. Its output is down 5%, on par with Kenya but less severe than Zambia (-10%). 

Rice

A major observation is the increase in rice production in south and South-East Asia, starting with India (+1%), Indonesia (+2%), Bangladesh (+6%) and Vietnam (+8%). The volume is up 1.4 million tonnes in all countries, except in Bangladesh where the increase reaches 2.7 million tonnes. Argentina, a relatively minor producer, mainly for export, recorded a 9% increase after a poor year when production dropped by about 5%. 

In clear relation with weather conditions, production dropped 1% in Mozambique, Myanmar and the Philippines,  but by 3% in Thailand and by 8% in Cambodia.

Wheat

Several European producers of wheat show decreases below 2018 output, some of them significant: Romania -17%, Turkey -15%, Belarus -13% Hungary -11%, Poland -5%  and Germany and France -1%. Positive values are observed for Italy (+7%) and Great Britain (+8%). 

The positive changes that occur in some eastern European and western to central Asian countries, including Ukraine (+4%) and Russia (+9%) are somewhat uncertain because of very unusual winter conditions characterised by unseasonably high temperatures; this may have affected crops in a way that is not yet fully understood. 

Production increases are also inferred for China (+1%), Egypt, Brazil, Ethiopia and Pakistan  (+4% to +10%). The largest increases are projected for Pakistan (+10%), Morocco (+12%), South-Africa (+14%), Mexico (+17%), and Iran  (+19%) where floods have destroyed crops and infrastructure but also supplied much needed water.

Production decreases are projected for two southern Hemisphere wheat growers, Argentina and Australia, -3% and -13%, respectively. In the United States, the wheat production will increase 10%. 

Soybean

In the northern hemisphere thecrop is still to be planted, so that only Argentina and Brazil can bemeaningfully mentioned here. Similar to the other rain-fed summer crop, theArgentinian Soybean crop is up (+9%) while Brazil stayed at the level of the 2018output.

Major importers and exporters

Table 5.2 shows the performance of the major importers and exporters of maize, rice as paddy, wheat and soybeans according to the data in table 5.1, both in terms of volume and of percentage. About 15 countries that are not covered in Table 5.1 are part of the top ten importers or exporters. They include Bolivia, Paraguay and Uruguay among the exporters and, among the importers, Algeria, Benin, Colombia, Côte d'Ivoire, Iraq, Japan, Korean Republic, Netherlands, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, and Spain. 

Since the 10 top exporters dominate the production landscape, the percentage change in their output relatively closely follows table 5.1: +0.3% for maize exporters and +0.7% for producers, 1.4% for rice exporters and +1.1% for producers, 1.7% for wheat exporters and 1.5% for producers and, for soybean, 0.3% for exporters and 1.2% for producers.

Overall, the top 3 exporters increased their maize output by 2.3%, while the increases reach 1.6% for rice, a significant 6.5% for wheat and 0.4% for soybean. For wheat, the top exporter, the United States, is expected to outperform all immediate competitors. 

For maize, the exporters ranking 6 to 10 did relatively better (+4.6%) than the countries in ranks 1 to 5 (+1.4%). For rice the corresponding percentages are 1.3% and 1.7%; they are mainly due to the drop in Thailand (-3%) and the increase in Argentina (+9%). For maize, the first group includes Ukraine (-7%) and France (-14%) while the second has Hungary (-10%) and Paraguay (+12%).  Negative values in the second group (ranks 6 to 10) for Wheat (-0.2%) and soybean (-4.3%)  are due to the poor performance of wheat in Romania (10th exporter, production down 17%). For soybean, difference is brought about by Uruguay (6th exporter) which has suffered a negative trend in soybean production in recent years. In terms of production volumes, the top 5 producers of soybean have increased their output by 1.5 million tonnes, while those ranking 6 to 10 have a deficit of 643 thousand tonnes.

Even if production volumes of importers are obviously lower than those of exporters, the volumes have increased, mostly by percentages larger than those of exporters, illustrating the efforts some countries are making to reduce their dependence on foreign markets.  For soybean in particular, China – the first global soybean importer – has recently reversed the negative production trend and the trend-based production for 2019 is up 2.6%. For importers 3 to 4 (Mexico, Germany, Spain) the increases amount to 5%, 34% and 15%, respectively. 

Altogether, Table 5.2 present a situation where no particular tension is expected to affect the trade of maize, rice, wheat and soybean, as far as supply and demand is concerned. However, since many productions in the Table are trend-based, the situation may evolve as more modelled data become available. The changes will be reflected in the revised Table 5.2 in the August 2019 CropWatch bulletin.

Table 5.2 : Comparison of 2019 and 2018 production of major importers and exporters as well as the change in the offer and demand 2017 and 2018. The table lists percent changes as well as absolute amounts based on table 5.1