The on and off Iraqi wheat market

Farm and Ranch July 30, 2010 U.S. wheat growers are seeing Iraq as an on-again, off-again customer. Paul Spencer is the senior U.S. agricultural attaché in Baghdad and he says sales of U.S. wheat to that nation are all over the place.

Spencer: “You know in 2008 when markets were very tight we dominated the market. We provided I think over 700-million dollars of wheat to this market. Last year we didn‘t sell any. This year we are doing pretty well, but it really is driven by the relative prices of wheat from other origins and what the Iraqis need. They had a decent wheat crop this year and that pushed down demand a little bit. We are certainly competing with the Australians, the Canadians and increasingly Russian wheat and former Soviet Union wheat in this market.”

And Spencer says sales are likely to remain on and off depending upon U.S. prices and the availability of wheat from U.S. competitors.

Of course supplies of Black Sea wheat are a question mark this year with drought reducing production in many former Soviet Union countries. There has been speculation Russia may have to restrict its wheat exports, something government officials there deny. A denial analysts are skeptical of.

Ag attaché Spencer says Iraq offers opportunities as a feed grain market too but there are some Iraqi testing policies that are currently prohibiting that.

Spencer: “And because the testing policy would keep a vessel docked at the port for a number of weeks, no commercial shippers are willing to come. So, if we can address the policy issue we think there would be an immediate opportunity for sales.”

I’m Bob Hoff and that’s the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report on Northwest Aginfo Net.

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