US and Canadian farmers are bracing for a sharply smaller wheat harvest due to the driest conditions in decades
A grasshopper perches on a drought-stressed spring wheat plant near Bowdon, North Dakota, the US, on July 28 2021. Picture: REUTERS/KARL PLUMEMillers and bakers are draining wheat reserves and paying more for spring wheat used in baking, as drought shrivels crops across the Canadian Prairies and northern US Plains that produce more than half of the world's supply.
Importers from Britain to China must pay up for limited North American harvests or turn to other suppliers like Australia and Russia. US prices are more difficult to forecast, since flour prices dropped earlier this year as lockdowns eased and fewer people baked at home, he said.Canada's spring wheat crop is expected at between 16-millin and 20-million tonnes, well off last year's 25.8 million, said Bruce Burnett, director of markets and weather information at MarketsFarm. Just 16% of spring wheat in Saskatchewan and 21.6% in Alberta is in good or excellent condition, according to provincial governments.
In Montana, where the USDA has deemed 42% of spring wheat in very poor condition and another 43% in poor shape, growers are buying out of sales contracts inked earlier in the season with elevators because they will not have wheat to deliver. Spring wheat from Russia and Kazakhstan, however, does not have the same characteristics important for baking, such as gluten strength, as US hard red spring wheat and Canadian Western Red Spring, said Mike Spier of US. Wheat Associates, a trade group that promotes US wheat overseas.
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