5.1 CropWatch food production estimates

Methodological introduction

Table 5.1 presents the final assessment by the CropWatch team of the global maize, rice, wheat and soybeans production estimates for 2019. It is issued at a time when all 2018-2019 winter crops and 2019 summer crops in the temperate northern hemisphere have been harvested; in the southern hemisphere winter crops are growing and the planting of the summer season/monsoon season is underway or about to start. The planting of the second crop is ongoing or about to start in equatorial areas.  

CropWatch production estimates differ from most other global or regional estimates by the use of near-real time geophysical data and models.  They are 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 in the two last months of 2019, for which no directly observed crop condition information is yet available. In Table 5.1 below, modeled outputs are in red bold font.  The percentage of modeled global production varies according to crops: 85% for maize, 94% for rice, 89% of wheat (most of it being northern hemisphere winter wheat) and 82% for soybeans. The remaining estimates are trend-based, e.g., 15% for maize.

The 42 countries for which production estimates are provided are described in detail in chapter 3 while a whole chapter is devoted to China (Chapter 4). Kyrgyzstan was added for the first time in this bulletin. The 42 + 1 countries are referred to conventionally as the “Major producers”. “Others” include the 141 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 red bold estimates in the present chapter are calibrated against national agricultural statistics (as opposed to FAOSTAT). This means that (1) sub-national statistics are used at least for the largest countries and (2) 2018 information is included in the calibration. It is also stressed that the calibration 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 major producers represent at least 90% of production and 80% of exports. “Others” and the countries shown in black in the production table were extrapolated to 2019 based on a combination of two linear trends from 2009 to 2017 and 2014 to 2018.

Production estimates (table 5.1)

CropWatch estimates the global 2019 production of the major commodities at 1055 million tonnes of maize, up 0.5% from 2018, 754 millions for rice (as paddy; up 4.2%), 716 million tonnes of wheat (a 0.9% increase) and 324 million tonnes of soybeans, 1.0% lower than last year’s output. The major producers contribute 975 million tonnes of maize (+0.9%), 684 millions for rice (+4.6%), 646 million tonnes of wheat (+0.9%) and 305 million tonnes of soybeans (-0.7%). The share of the “minor producers” (shown as “Others” in the table) to the global production varies from 5% (soybean) to 9% (rice and wheat) with maize at 7%. Compared with the final CropWatch estimates for 2018, the relative importance of  “others” did not change. Major producers outperform all “others” for cereals (maize, 0.9% Vs. -4.5%; rice, +4.6% Vs. -0.1% and wheat, 0.9% Vs. 0.4%) as well as for soybeans (-0.7% Vs. -5.0%), increasing the dominance of large exporters.

For the major producers, the current production estimate is below the trend for maize (0.9% Vs. 3.1%), wheat (0.9% Vs. 2.3%) and soybean (-0.7% Vs. 4.9%), but above for rice (4.6% Vs. 1.2%) due to relatively more favorable environmental conditions in southern and south-east Asia than in the temperate northern hemisphere.

In China, the comprehensive CropWatch estimates in table 5.1 and chapter 4 assess variations of all crops as positive, including maize (+1%), rice and soybean (+3%) and wheat (+2%); some estimates were revised upward, in particular for maize (from negative to positive), due to favorable summer crop growing conditions. This puts China together with Egypt, Pakistan and the United States in the group of countries where the three cereals did well in 2019, corresponding to output growth of 10.6 million tons, 2.0 million tons, 5.2 million tons and 9.7 million tons, respectively.

The largest net cereal production increases occurred in India (13.3 million tons, in spite of a drop in wheat output), China, United States, Pakistan (as mentioned), followed by Bangladesh (3.7 million tons), Argentina (3.3 million tons), Myanmar (2.6 million tons) and several central and western Asian countries (Afghanistan, Iran, Uzbekistan; 2.0 million tons to 2.4 million tons) where wheat did well after several years of poor performance.

The largest net cereal production decreases in excess of 1 million tons affected Australia (-5.4 million tons, wheat), Kazakhstan (-3.5 million tons, wheat), South Africa    (-1.7 million tons, maize), Indonesia (-1.6 million tons, rice) and Ukraine (-1.4 million tons, maize and wheat). As described in the country narratives in Chapter 3, the listed situations are directly related to prevailing environmental conditions

Table 5.1: 2019 cereal and soybean productions estimates in thousands tonnes. Numbers in black are trend-based while red bold numbers corresponds to modeled crops that have been harvested or were growing at the time of reporting.  Rice is expressed as paddy. Δ is the percentage of change of 2019 production when compared with corresponding 2018 values.

Maize

Similar to the other crops in table 5.1, the discussion concentrates on modeled estimates (those in bold red) rather than on statistical projections (black) that do not take current climatic and agricultural environments into account.   

Countries that experienced large production rises include Morocco, a minor producer of maize (91 thousand tonnes), but nevertheless with a marked increase of 39%, and Pakistan, which passes the 5 million tons bar with a 16% percent increase. Increases between 7 and 9% occurred in Argentina, Egypt and Myanmar and several countries recorded a 5% rise: Turkey, Hungary and Kazakhstan.   Large drops exceeding 10% affected some significant producers, including Thailand and South-Africa (-11% and -12%) as well as two African countries in the Horn of Africa (Kenya, -21%) and in Southern Africa (-22%).

Among the main exporters (Table 5.2) the top three countries (United States, Brazil and Argentina) increased their output by 9.6 million tons, or 1.9%, while the top ten are up only 10.9 million tons, meaning that the bulk of the increase is from the United States and Argentina, as Brazilian production is Unchanged. Among the top three importers (Japan, Mexico and South Korea) only Mexico is also a significant producer (22 million tons during 2019). With a drop in the volume of production of the three listed countries reaching 1.5 million tonnes (6.2%), increased flows should be expected to Mexico.

Rice

A drop in paddy production is listed for several significant South-east Asian producers, including Cambodia (-8%) and Indonesia (-2%).  Improvements, on the other hand, can be listed for Pakistan and Iran with rather large production increases of 24% and 14%, respectively. Increases in the range from 9 to 10% are estimated for Myanmar, India, Egypt and Argentina.

The top exporters include India, Thailand, Vietnam, Pakistan and the United States. India and Pakistan did well or very well, with moderate performance in Vietnam and Thailand, and a drop of 9% in the United States. The top five exporters increased their production by 18.2 million tons, or 7%. Among the top 10 importers, only Indonesia is a significant producer; the production drop in the country (2%, as mentioned above) is equivalent to about 1.1 million tons, which is easily covered by exporters from the same region.

Wheat

In addition to China, a dozen of countries are estimated to have increased their wheat production by 3% or more, including several semi-arid central and western Asian countries such as Afghanistan (+98%), Uzbekistan (+37%), Iran (+16), Pakistan (+10), and Mongolia (+7%). In most cases, the large increase results from a poor 2018 crop. In Europe, the list includes Belarus and Italy (+6%), Germany and Romania (+3%). Egypt (+9%) was already mentioned above for generally favorable production of all cereals. Finally, the three northern American neighbors need to be mentioned: Mexico (+17%), Canada and the United States (+4% each).

Several wheat producers of the general Mediterranean and central European area had low production, for instance Ukraine (-1%) and France (-2%) but larger drops compared with the previous season occurred in Hungary (-3%), Morocco and Turkey (both at -6%). Ethiopia is mentioned too with -3%. Among the important producers and exporter, we need to mention Argentina (-2%), Brazil (-4%), South Africa (-13%) and Australia (-21%).

Among the top 10 exporters, 5 had production drops. In addition to the already mentioned ones (Argentina, Australia, France and Ukraine) also Kazakhstan underwent a drop in production compared with 2018 that reached 22%. As a result, the wheat output of the top 10 producers is down 1.7%, equivalent to 5.0 million tons.  Among the top wheat importers, only Indonesia is not at the same time a producer. They did generally well in 2019 as they increased their production by 3.4 million tons, or 3.6%. The amount is more than half of the production shortfall of the main exporters (5.0 million tons, as mentioned).

Soybean

Soybean production is up by 25% in Mexico, a minor producer (less than 1 million tons) and one of the top importers. Among the important producers, production is up by 9% in Argentina, 3% in China and in Brazil. Both Russia and Indonesia increased their production by 1% over 2018 output. Production is slightly down in India (-1%) which is not a major player in international soybean trade.

The most spectacular drop is the one assessed for the Unites States (-9%) as a result of unfavorable weather and policy. A consequence is that the output of the top ten producers is down 1.4%, equivalent to 4.2 million tons. Importers, whose volume of production is about 15 times lower than that of the exporters, increased their their output by 0.6 million tons (top 10), up 3.9% compared with 2018. Markets should remain stable.

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

Note: About 154 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, Spain We stress that some numbers in table 5.2 are based on extrapolations.