04/20/05 A recent Chinese white wheat buy

Farm and Ranch April 20, 2005 The USDA's weekly export sales report issued last Thursday contained somewhat of a surprise in it. A soft white wheat purchase by China. Ever since the export report Washington Wheat Commission CEO Tom Mick has been trying to learn more about that Chinese purchase. Mick: "Well they bought 50-thousand tons and this was a welcome purchase because we haven't seen China in the market for a long time. We have been able to find out that a group of private mills went together and bought the soft white. This is very encouraging to us because it shows that mills have a preference for our soft white due to its quality. In China there is a certain allocation of wheat imports that are given to the flour mills that they can import privately without taking the stocks from the government. We hope this continues in the future but right now it is a big question mark. China's harvest is coming on in June so we don't know if they are going to buy any more before that time or if they are going to wait and see what their harvest looks like." With that new sale USDA numbers put accumulated white wheat sales to China in the current marketing year at about 376 million tons. A year ago at this time white wheat sales to China were only 28 million tons. All U.S. wheat sales to China for this marketing year total two-million-13 tons. I'm Bob Hoff and that's the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report on the Northwest Ag Information Network.