The Canadian Wheat Board’s already low export projections have been
scaled back even lower.
With a sizable portion of the crop going unharvested this fall, chief
executive officer Greg Arason said the marketing agency is looking at a
2002-03 wheat and barley export program of around eight million tones.
That’s made up of four to 4.5 million tonnes of wheat, three million
tonnes of durum and a few hundred thousand tonnes of barley.
The board had previously talked about exports of around 10 million
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tonnes this year due to the drought-reduced crop, but those numbers
were undone by harvest problems.
“There’s probably 10 percent of the crop out there still,” Arason said
in an interview Nov. 14. “A better than anticipated sign-up for the
series A contract is encouraging, but we’re still in that ballpark of
around eight million tonnes.”
That’s a staggeringly low number for an industry that a few years ago
was forecasting potential annual wheat exports of 26 million tonnes by
2004-05.
To put this year’s export numbers into some context:
- Almost the entire wheat and durum export program could theoretically
be shipped through one export terminal. For example, the Cascadia
terminal at Vancouver has the capacity to handle up to seven million
tonnes of grain a year.
- This year’s exports by the CWB will be the lowest since the 1959-60
crop year, when the agency exported 7.9 million tonnes, made up of 6.5
million tonnes of wheat and 1.4 million tonnes of barley.
- In the 1990s, Canadian wheat and durum exports averaged 19 million
tonnes.
- Last year, the four top foreign buyers (Japan, Iran, United States
and Mexico) together bought 4.3 million tonnes of Canadian wheat, which
is about how much the board expects to export in total this year.
The board has said it will carefully choose among potential customers
to get the best price.
That means some regular buyers of Canadian wheat will have to go
elsewhere, but Arason expressed confidence those customers will be back.
“Obviously they’re going to have to try out other suppliers,” said
Arason. “But if we believe in our quality system, we should look good
in relation to those other suppliers and hopefully it will reinforce
that fact when we get back in the market.”
Glenn Lennox, wheat market analyst with Agriculture Canada, said while
quality-conscious customers like Japan and the United Kingdom will
stick with Canadian wheat, it may be more difficult to get back some
price-conscious buyers.
“This could mean we could lose some future sales to Iran, the
Philippines, Indonesia, etc.,” he said. “They buy CWRS wheat but will
switch if lower prices are available.”
