The production outlook for the current bulletin includes only the major producers in the southern hemisphere, as assessments for the northern hemisphere would be too hypothetical at this early stage in the season. Wheat production results for Argentina, Australia and Brazil are listed in Annex B. The text below also includes estimates for Egypt and South Africa.

For Argentina, CropWatch puts the winter wheat production of 2017-18 (harvest extends into January 2018) at 11.080 million tons, a significant drop of 4.7% below the previous year’s value, resulting from the combined decrease of yield (-1.6%) and cultivated area (-3.2%) . At the provincial level, the major producer (Buenos Aires) did relatively well (0.8 % below 2016). Among the major wheat provinces, only Santa Fe did very poorly (-10.1%). The remaining minor producers fared even worse a decrease of 25.5%. Poor environmental conditions, specially at the late growing stages covered in this bulletin are the main factor behind the mediocre outcome of the season. More seriously, the 2017-2018 is yet another year in a time series of national productions which appear to have become very variable over the last decade, almost at the level of Australia.   

In Australia, the drop in wheat production reached 22.1% with 24.606 million tonnes output. Again, poor climatic conditions are to blame in a mostly semi-arid setting which has demonstrated huge variability in the past, for instance -57.0% in 1006-2007 and a spectacular +157.9% in 2003-2004 after an equally dramatic drop of -58.3% in 2002-2003.  Therefore, even if the 2017-18 performance may appear catastrophic, it fits well into the history of Australian  wheat production and also indicates a very skillful management of very variable water resources. All States did poorly in 2017-2018 particularly the second largest producer, New South Wales with a production drop reaching 34.3%. The smallest drop was recorded in Victoria with -9.6%.

Brazil, the smallest, but also the most dependable wheat producer in the hemisphere, production reached 7,876 million tonnes, up 4% over 2016-17. The southernmost and most “temperate” State of Rio Grande do Sul did particularly well with more than half the national production (4.818 million tonnes, up 6.4%).

South Africa currently cultivates about a third of its wheat area of the 1970s or 1980s. Just before the turn of the century, South Africa still used to be a relatively important wheat producer with an output around of 3 million tonnes which was, at the time, comparable to the output of Brazil. While the second has about doubled its production over the last twenty years, the production in South-Africa has undergone a constant erosion to the extent that the country now imports more wheat than it produces: the output is now 20% less than at the beginning of the century, with – however - a very low inter-annual variability. The extremes reached  -37% (2002-2003) and +31% in 2015-16, according to data in FAOSTAT. The low variability is partly due to irrigation: the crop is grown throughout the country as an irrigated winter crop (with the Free State being the major producer) and under rainfed conditions in the Mediterranean climate of the south-west. 

The current seasons output is estimated by CropWatch at 1.356 million tonnes, corresponding to a drop of 20.4% compared with the previous season. Here again, there is a direct link between poor rainfall and output, which has also affected other crops (e.g. grapes) as well a other water uses in the south-west. According to the section on disasters in this issue of the crop bulletin, Cape Town, the major city in Mediterranean South Africa, is expected to run out of water in April, if winter rainfall does not start early, before April.

Finally, CropWatch also includes a wheat production estimate for Egypt: 11.749 million tons, 7.2% over last year’s output. Due to virtually all wheat being irrigated under very favorable conditions of intense sunshine and dry desert conditions, pest incidence is low and the production very dependable.