News of global wheat week: EU subsidy is lower than expected, US wheat is higher

Introduction: in the past week, most of the global wheat prices have risen slightly After the end of the long Spring Festival holiday in Asia, the purchasing demand of flour processing plants has increased, which constitutes a general support for wheat prices In addition, the export subsidies provided by the European Union continue to be lower than expected, which has also boosted the wheat prices in other regions The soft red winter wheat contract on the Chicago Board of trade recently rose $0.55 per ton, while the feed wheat contract on LIFFE in the UK rose £ 1.20 per ton On Thursday, the European Union's grain analysis agency released a report predicting that the total grain output of the EU in 2005 will be 5 percentage points lower than the huge level in 2004 Among them, wheat production is expected to decrease by 3 percentage points year on year, while durum wheat production is expected to decrease by 27 percentage points This week, the European Commission issued an export subsidy of 6 euros per ton to 148650 tons of wheat at a tender meeting on Thursday This level of subsidy is still at the low end of market expectation, and will not make EU wheat more competitive in North Africa market, because the current wheat price in Argentina is still very low Three weeks ago, the European Commission decided to resume subsidies for wheat exports But the number and amount of subsidies in the past three weeks are lower than market expectations, which also helps wheat prices in the United States and other exporting countries go up Australian wheat prices fell this week, with February delivery of Australian standard white wheat down about $2 per ton as exports face fierce competition from Argentina and the United States Globally, the U.S Department of agriculture raised its forecast for world wheat production to 622.2 million tons last week, higher than the January forecast of 620.9 million tons, as record wheat supply continues to pose top pressure on the wheat market In addition, this week, the Australian government increased wheat production by 200000 tons, from the previous estimate of 2020 million tons to 20.4 million tons, but this is still far lower than the record production of 25.7 million tons last year Other news includes heavy snowfall in China's winter wheat producing areas and good winter wheat overwintering conditions The U.S Meteorological Agency predicts that the wheat producing areas in China will be favorable for crop growth in early spring Recently, the Philippines has also signed a contract to purchase 30000 tons of Chinese wheat, which is the first report on Chinese wheat exports this year But China is still expected to be a net importer of wheat in the next few years Brandon Stewart, chairman of the Australian wheat board, said this week that in the next three to five years, China will continue to import 7 to 9 million tons of wheat a year Since China resumed importing wheat at the end of the previous year, Australia has sold 2.5 million tons of wheat to China