India Becoming Wheat Exporting Force

India Becoming Wheat Exporting Force

I’m KayDee Gilkey with the Market Line Report for Feb. 19, 2013. ?
The commodity markets were closed yesterday for Presidents’ Day so there are no market prices to report. Today rather we will be discussing India and its recent emergence into the world wheat exporting market.
Farm Direction President Kevin VanTrump shared at the recent Pacific Northwest Farm Forum that India has increasing wheat supply for world market.

VanTrump: “If you talk to a lot of people in the investment world, they say India is where China was in the mid-90s. What we saw happen was India’s wheat production really failed there in ’07, ’08 and they took themselves out of the export games. They wanted to build up more their reserve stock because their lower class was moving up to the middle class and had a higher demand for higher protein food. Now all of a sudden India has produced several bumper crops. They will be harvesting in late February and are looking at another record crop. They have three times the government supply they had targeted to have. So the government says they are going to do something about that. They way they are going to do it is they are going to start export more grain. So we are already seeing them step into the export business in a lot bigger fashion than they were. That coupled with the Black Sea region is really a cause for us to have a little bit of concern. Exports from Canada and Australia are factoring in and it is made the U.S. a secondary supplier. When the lines are too long or people can’t get the cheap prices, they turn to the U.S. and that unfortunately has tapered off our exports.”