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 2018. 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.

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 2017, for which no directly observed crop condition information is as yet available. In the table below, modelled outputs are red bolded.  The percentage of modelled production varies according to crops: 18% for maize, 58% for rice, 83% of wheat (most of it being winter wheat) and 43% for soybeans. The share of modelled production will gradually increase and reach to 80% to 90% in the November bulletin. 

It is important to note that the current bulletin increases the countries that are monitored in detail from 30 +1 (“1” being China) to 41 +1, to put more emphasis on some African and Asian countries. More countries may be added in the next bulletins. The 41 countries 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 “Major producers”. “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 2018 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.

CropWatch estimates the global 2018 production of the major commodities at 1045 million tonnes of maize, up 1.8% over 2017, 745 millions for rice (up 0.6%), 697 million tonnes of wheat (a 3.2% drop below 2017) and 323 million tonnes of soybeans, virtually equivalent to 2017 (-0.1%). The major producers contribute 960 million tonnes of maize (+1.8%), 678 millions for rice (+0.6%), 629 million tonnes of wheat (-3.5%) and 302 million tonnes of soybeans (-0.5%). The share of the “minor producers” (shown as “Others” in the table) to the global production  varies from 6.4% (soybean) to 9.6% (wheat) with maize and rice being at 8.2% and 8.9%, respectively. Compared with the final CropWatch estimates for 2017, the relative importance of  “others” has decreased as the percentages were 7.7% for soybean, 15.2% (wheat), 12.1% (maize) and 10.2% (rice as paddy).

Major producers outperform “others” for maize and rice (1.8% Vs. 1.4% and 0.6% Vs. 0.3%, respectively) while minor producers outperform the major producers for wheat (0.5% Vs. -3.5%) and especially soybean (6.4% Vs. -0.5%) which is a common observation showing that more countries are trying to join the closed club of soybean producers dominated by the USA, Argentina and Brazil and some of their south-American neighbours.

Table 5.1: 2018 cereal and soybean productions estimates in thousands tonnes. Although more complex situations do occur in the case of multiple cropping, numbers in black are trend-based while numbers in red generally corresponds to modelled crops that have been harvested or were growing at the time of reporting.

Table 5.1. CropWatch productions estimates, thousands tons

Maize

As for the other crops in table 5.1, the discussion concentrates on actual numbers (those in red) rather than on statistical projections (black).  Countries that experienced large production increases include mostly Egypt (+6.4%) and Brazil (+3.1%) , one of the largest global suppliers of the crop (3rd exporter worldwide). The second largest exporter (Argentina) suffered a drop in maize output of 3.8% due to drought in the northern provinces, which affected as well adjoining areas in Uruguay and Brazil.

The spectacular production increase in Kenya (+32.9%) is due to two factors: dry conditions in 2017 and a recent wet spell in the country, which has favoured the early planting and development of long rains maize. Although the abundant precipitation has provided needed soil moisture and may have a lasting effect on crop condition, the final outcome of the “mahindi” season will depend on the development of the ongoing long rains.

Mixed conditions prevail in southern Africa where maize is a main staple. South Africa is an important exporter (10th worldwide) but suffered a reduced output 6.8% below last year’s. Neighbouring Angola and Mozambique are both up (+4.1% and +2.2%, respectively) but Zambia is down (-1.1%).

Also to be mentioned: Mexico had a drop in maize production of 1.8% and the Philippines, a minor producer when considering the maize potential in the country is up 2.2%.

Rice

A major observation is the generalised drop in rice production in South-East Asia, starting with Cambodia (-2.2%), Indonesia (-1.1%), Thailand (-5.2%)  Vietnam (-1.4%). It is not evident what caused the drop, although reduced sunshine may have played a part. The countries also have in common a climate with equatorial tendencies (“all year round wet”) and they experienced generally cooler than average temperature during the previous reporting period. Countries further to the north (Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Philippines) have generally a more marked dry season during the northern hemisphere winter and dry-season irrigation is more common. In the four listed countries rice output increased by 3.2%, 2.6%, 1.5% and 3.8%, respectively. 

Argentina produces about twenty times less rice than maize, but the crop is mentioned here because of the poor performance of rice (-15.3%). Argentina faces a historically poor agricultural season as next to rice, maize and soybean performed poorly and will affect the countries export capacity.

Wheat

Good actual satellite data are available for northern hemisphere wheat. Some of the southernmost countries (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nigeria) have reached or completed harvest, while the high latitudes will harvest from early to late summer, depending on location. Thus is also to say that unfavourable crops in the second group may improve if spring (May onwards) precipitation provides moisture that was short during dormancy. Reductions in production exceeding 5% occurred on all continents, and include some of the major global producers such as Canada (-13.0%) and the United States (-13.5%) due to unfavourable weather including poor sunshine, drought and floods and cold waves. Other major producers such as India, Kazakhstan and Russia suffered a drop in production reaching 6.3%, 12.9% and 7.9%, respectively. It is mostly the poor performance of the large global producers of wheat that are responsible for the global drop of production mentioned above (-3.2%).

Countries with positive outcomes include Bangladesh (+7.7%,),  Iran and Turkey (+6.2% and +7.9%, in both countries the first favourable crop after a run of bad or mixed seasons), Belarus, Poland and Romania  (+9.7%, +11.9% and +6.5%, respectively), Egypt (+7.0%) where the good wheat crop is to be added to increased maize and rice productions.

Soybean

In the northern hemisphere the crop is still to be planted, so that only Argentina and Brazil can be meaningfully mentioned here. Similar to maize and rice, the Argentinian Soybean crop is down (-8.2%) while, in comparison, Brazil did well (+0.8%).

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. 14 additional countries are part of the top ten importers or exporters. They are listed in the note to Table 5.2.

Overall, the top 5 importers and the top 10 importers increased their production over 2017. For the top 10 importers, the increased volume of the output varies from 452 kTonnes (Wheat) to 3629 kTonnes for maize. The values are shown with a minus sign as they correspond to reduced demand on the international markets. As a group, their performance was slightly below that of the majority of countries (last line in table 5.1) for maize (+1.4% Vs. +1.8% for the world) and for rice (+0.3% Vs. +0.6%). For wheat and for Soybean (if the northern hemisphere output turns out to be “average”), they did significantly better for wheat (1.3% Vs. -3.2% globally) and for soybean (3.8% Vs. -0.1% globally). As a result, the demand will probably be comparable or slightly above last year’s by a couple of percent representing population growth.

Since the top exporters dominate the production landscape, the percentage change in their output closely follows table 5.1: +1.8% for maize in both the top 10 exporters and the total of all countries, 0.7% Vs 0.6% (top 10 exporters Vs global) for rice and -0.4% Vs. -0.1% for Soybean. Some difficulties may arise with wheat supply if the situation does not improve in the USA and Canada as the projected production deficit of the top 10 exporters reaches just above 17 million tonnes.

Table 5.2 : Comparison of 2018 and 2017 production of top 5 and top 10 importers and exporters as well as the change in the offer and demand for the top 10 importers and exporters between 2017 and 2018

Note: in addition to the the countries listed in Table 5.2, the following countries belong to the group of major importers and exporters: Algeria, Bolivia, Colombia, Côte d'Ivoire, Iraq, Japan, Malaysia, Netherlands, Paraguay, Republic of Korea, Saudi Arabia, Spain, United Arab Emirates and Uruguay. Their 2017 and 2017 production of the reference crops are trend-based.