Wheat harvest is going on around the world. Kim Anderson, a grain market economist with Oklahoma State University, talks about harvest progress.
“We’ve got about a 29.2-billion-bushel world crop being harvested and 1.73 billion here in the United States. We’ve harvested about 80 percent of that world wheat crop and the majority of the U.S. wheat crop. Look at when wheat is harvested, the harvest starts in probably mid-to-late March in India, Pakistan, North Africa, and that area. By the time we get to June one, we’ve harvested 25 percent of the world’s wheat crop. That’s mostly importing wheat countries rather than exporting countries.”
Anderson talks about wheat harvest through the rest of the 2023 calendar.
“Then you’ve got a big, relatively large harvest in June, July, and August. When we get to September, we’ve got about 80 percent of the 2023 crop harvested, and it goes on out to the southern hemisphere right now. All that we have left is spring wheat in the northern hemisphere. We’ll move to Argentina and Australia and Southern Africa somewhere in late October, and it’ll go through October, November, and December.”
The world’s corn harvest is making solid progress, too.
“The world is looking at harvesting a record 47.8 billion bushels. The United States, a record 15.1 billion bushels. You look at U.S. ending stocks somewhere around 2.2 billion. The average is almost 1.7, something like that. But if you look at soybeans, the world’s looking at a record 14.8-billion-bushel harvest, but the U.S. harvest is around an average of 4.2 billion. Ending stocks will be a record for the world of 4.4 billion, and the United States, 245 million bushels, so tight stocks in the United States.”