Wheat output may climb to record high for fourth yr

NEW DELHI: Wheat production in India, the second-biggest grower, may advance 6.4% to a record for a fourth year after favourable weather and high prices boosted planting , a government official said. Output may climb to 86 million metric tonnes in the year ending June 30 compared with 80.8 million tonnes the year earlier, P K Basu, agriculture secretary, said in an interview on Monday in New Delhi.

That's 2% more than the farm ministry's April 6 estimate of 84.3 million tonnes. A bumper harvest may help the government end a four-year ban on wheat exports , potentially cooling a 64% rally in prices in Chicago in the past year that partly fueled global food costs to a record in February. The Standard & Poor's GSCI Agriculture Index has surged 72% in the past year as dry weather in Europe and China and floods in the US eroded prospects for corn, wheat and soybean crops.

“If India allows exports that will increase wheat supply to the global market and be bearish for prices,” Erin FitzPatrick, a commodities analyst at Rabobank International in London , said in a phone interview today. World wheat production is projected at 664.3 million tonnes, the US department of agriculture said on June 9, down from 669.6 million estimated in May. Global inventories may total 184.3 million tonnes before the 2012 harvests in the Northern Hemisphere, compared with 187.1 million tonnes a year earlier, according to the USDA.