SYDNEY, Sept 9 (Reuters) – Australia’s official wheat crop estimate has been lowered by 1.5 percent from the previous outlook as dryness curbed yields across the east coast.
The Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences (ABARES) pegged Australian wheat production at 24.234 million tonnes, down from the previous estimate of 24.588 million tonnes made in June.
Last year it produced 27 million tonnes.
The current estimate is lower than the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s forecast of 26 million tonnes.
The dry weather is also set to curb canola production, ABARES said.
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Australian canola production was pegged at 3.388 million tonnes, down 2.4 percent from the previous estimate in June and down 10 percent from last year.
Barley output may total 7.55 million tonnes from 7.46 million tonnes in June and down 21 percent from last year, it said.
Much of the east coast has seen less than 80 percent of average rainfall over the last year, data from the Australia Bureau of Meteorology shows. Rain has fallen recently but it came too late to have a big beneficial impact.
Production could fall even further, ABARES said, without at least average rainfall over the next few weeks, the critical growing stage for the crop.
Wheat production in New South Wales was lowered by more than three percent to 7.02 million tonnes, while output in Queensland was seen sliding 17.5 percent to 1.1 million tonnes.
However, output in Australia’s largest producing and exporting state, Western Australia, was left unchanged at 8.4 million tonnes.
CBH Group, Australia’s largest wheat exporter, though, sees production in the state above the ABARES figure.
