On Thursday, the International Grains Council cut its 2017-18 global production forecast for corn, wheat and barley. The revisions were made as a result of the dry weather in North America, Europe and Australia. The IGC revised its global corn production down to 1.02 billion metric tons. The revision was primarily due to cutting US production estimates by 5.6 million metric tons and EU production by .7 metric tons. The IGC increased the Brazil 2017-18 corn crop up by 1.5 million metric tons.
The IGC also lowered global wheat production estimates by 3 million metric tons to 732 due to a decline in expectations from US, Australia and the EU. The Russian wheat crop was revised three million metric tons higher in their projections to 71 million metric tons.
The Wheat Quality Council estimated their official Spring wheat yield on Thursday after traveling North Dakota, South Dakota and Minnesota for three days. Spring wheat yields were estimated at 38.1 bushels per acre, down 2.2 bpa from the July 12th USDA estimates of 40.3 bpa. The wheat tour does not estimate total production because it is still early to estimate harvested acres. Abandonment will be a real wild card especially in the western part of the spring wheat region. Crop yields looked good to the east and steadily got worse as the tour moved west. In western North Dakota tour scouts noted that some wheat had already been baled for hay. The Spring wheat tour did not enter Montana which has been in significant drought much of the growing season.
The Ministry of France announced on Thursday that tariffs will be raised on beef imports into Japan, a key U.S trading partner. The tariff will increase from 38.5 percent to 50 percent and was automatically triggered after beef imports from all nations and from countries who do not have an economic partnership agreements increase more than 17 percent from the year earlier. Australia which provides a large amount of Japan’s imported beef will be exempt from this tariff because of their existing economic partnership agreement. This is the first time since 2003 that this automatic tariff has been triggered.
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