Ukraine Confirms Wheat Export Ban

Ukraine Confirms Wheat Export Ban

I’m KayDee Gilkey with the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report.

The Ukraine Ag Minister has confirmed they will run out of exportable wheat supplies by November 15th and in effect will halt exports. Casey Chumrau - Market Analyst with U.S. Wheat Associates - says the trade has known this for some time and built it into the wheat market - so the reaction has been somewhat muted.

Chumrau: “For several months now, the Ukrainian government has been implementing kinda of unofficial limits for exports. The traders in Ukraine were very well aware of that and so they have been operating under the understanding that they couldn’t go over a certain number of tons exported. In fact USDA, has put them at 4 million metric tons of expected export for this marketing year and that is where they are at.”

She says just because Ukraine is out of the export market next month doesn’t mean the U.S. will automatically get that business - since competitors like Russia continue to undercut our price. However - she thinks U.S. wheat exports will eventually pick up.

Chumrau: “Early in the marketing year the Russian prices were so far below any other competitors but of course they were selling a lot of wheat and the export pace was just going crazy. But now, those prices have gone up and those sales have really slowed. And at the same time, the U.S. prices have become more competitive, we are still not the lowest in the world but definitely at least closer and as we go forward we will become more competitive as the supplies in the world do become tighter.”

I’m KayDee Gilkey with the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report on the Ag Information Network.