Chapter 5. Focus and perspectives

Building on the CropWatch analyses presented in chapters 1 through 4, this chapter presents first early outlook of crop production for 2020 (section 5.1), as well as sections on recent disaster events (section 5.2), Drought impacts on rice production in lower Mekong river (5.3) and an update on El Niño (5.4).

5.1 CropWatch food production estimates

Table 5.1 presents this year’s second estimate by the CropWatch team of global maize, rice, wheat and soybean production in 2020. The production is forecasted based on remote sensing data from the start of growing season up to the end of April 2020. Winter crops in the Northern Hemisphere are still growing and summer crops are in very early stages, or yet to be planted in May. The harvest of last year's summer season/monsoon season has been completed while winter crops were mostly in their vegetative growth period. CropWatch will further update and review the production in the August and November 2020 CropWatch bulletins when more in-season satellite data become available.

The current bulletin only focuses on the crops grown or harvested between January and April as listed in table 5.1 below. The production values for each country are all remote sensing-based estimates/predictions while global production is projected by combining remote sensing model estimates and production trends. The percentage of modelled global production varies according to crops: 21% for maize, 36% for rice, 77% for wheat (most of it being northern hemisphere winter wheat) and 46% for soybeans. The crop conditions for 42 countries at national and agro-ecological zone level are provided in detail in chapter 3 while a whole chapter is devoted to China (Chapter 4). The 42 + 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.

CropWatch predicts the global production of the major commodities at 1057 million tonnes of maize, and 755 million tonnes for rice, both of which are the same as 2019. Wheat and soybean productions are projected at 737 million tonnes, and 329 million tonnes, up by 3% and 1% from 2019, respectively. The outlook for each country is described below.

Maize:

In this bulletin, maize production was projected for only 13 countries in the Southern Hemisphere or Equatorial areas out of the 43. Maize in other countries was either harvested by the end of 2019 or is just planted, or to be planted in the coming months. The total production of the 13 maize producing countries is projected at 218 million tonnes, 2% above 2019. Among the 13 countries, Brazil and Argentina are the top 2 maize producers with a 2% drop and 2% increase from 2019, respectively. The largest production increase in percentage was observed for South Africa whose maize production increased by 27% to 14,759 thousand tonnes. The significant increase of maize production is attributed to both expanded maize planted area and the increased yield thanks to the conducive rainfall in the main producing regions. Other big producers such as Indonesia and Mexico also present marginal increase of production by 2% and 1%. Maize production dropped in Mozambique, Myanmar, Vietnam and Zambia mainly due to the water stress during the growing season. The largest production drop was observed in Myanmar by 12% from 2019.

Rice:

Rice production was projected using remote sensing data for twelve countries as listed in table 5.1. Two thirds of the countries are located in South and Southeast Asia. Two countries in Africa (Angola and Mozambique), and two countries in South America (Argentina and Brazil) are also included. Among those 12 countries, Indonesia (same as 2019), Bangladesh (6% below 2019), Vietnam (3% below) and Thailand (6% above) are the top producers but with different inter-annual changes in production. Since rainfall in rice producing countries is relatively high, there is relatively less water stress in those countries and the production changes in percentage compared with 2019 are in general marginal to moderate, ranging from -5% in Bangladesh and Cambodia to +6% in Thailand. Still, most countries with reduced rice production are those that were affected by drought conditions, such as Brazil, Cambodia, Myanmar, and Vietnam.

Wheat:

Since most winter wheat in the Northern Hemisphere was sown around September to October of last year and the weather was generally favorable during winter to spring, the outbreak of COVID-19 has limited impacts on wheat production. According to the latest prediction, the total production of the 22 key wheat producing countries is at 569.4 million tonnes, which is 3% up from 2019. Greater differences are observed among countries in terms of inter-annual production change compared with the other three crops, ranging from 22% lower than 2019 in Ukraine and 23% up from 2019 in Mexico. It is also noteworthy that the top wheat producers (China, India, Russia) all present an increased wheat production, by 4%, 14% and 6% respectively, which contribute to a 20.54 million tonnes of production increase. Wheat production in USA, another important wheat producer, is projected at the same level as 2019. However, if the lockdown continues to the harvest season of winter crops, it might hamper harvest practices. Meanwhile, for several countries in Europe and Asia forecasted outputs are lower as compared to 2019, including Afghanistan, Belarus, France, Germany, Iran, Kyrgyzstan, Romania, Ukraine, United Kingdom, and Uzbekistan mainly due to the reduced planted area.

Soybean:

Considering the crop calendar, this CropWatch May Bulletin only focuses on the two major soybean producing countries in the Southern Hemisphere, Brazil and Argentina. The soybean productions for Brazil and Argentina are estimated at 99.85 million tonnes and 52.59 million tonnes, which are 1% below and 2% above 2019, respectively. The decrease in soybean production is mainly due to the dry spell in central-southern Brazil which resulted in lower yield compared with 2019. The combined soybean production of these two countries contributes to almost half of global soybean production and remains at the same level as 2019 which is a benefit for the global soybean market.

Early warning:

Based on the CropWatch early warning indicators, CropWatch also tracked the sowing progress for some countries at high latitude in the Northern Hemisphere such as spring crops in Canada and Kazakhstan, as well as summer crops in USA. By early May, sowing in Canada is 14% in advance from 2019 and it is 8% in advance in Kazakhstan. Maize sowing progress in USA is at same pace with 2019, while rice sowing is 7% in advance and soybean sowing progress is 1% delayed compared with the same period last year. According to our analyses, the lockdown did not result in a significant delay of sowing for spring crops and summer crops in the Northern Hemisphere. CropWatch will keep an eye on the impacts from COVID-19 in the following months and next bulletin.

Table 5.1: 2020 cereal and soybean production estimates in thousands tonnes. All the national production values in the table are remote sensing model-based estimates while the global production is projected by adding up the model-based production and trend-based model for all other countries. Δ is the percentage of change of 2020 production when compared with corresponding 2019 values