March 12, 2004

China Winter Wheat Crop Improves Over Last Year
 
The overall condition of China's winter wheat crop is better than last season, according to the report from the Remote Sensing Application Center of China's Ministry of Agriculture, local traders said.
 
From February 21 to March 5, the center monitored the crop conditions of major winter wheat producing regions in China.
 
The results show that the winter wheat in Henan, Shandong and southern Hebei, the three top wheat-producing provinces, were mostly in better condition compared with last year.
 
In northwestern regions, the wheat crops are generally in normal condition and in eastern China, crop conditions are normal to above average.
 
The wheat crops in southwestern China were mostly normal, but the wheat crops around Sichuan basin were in slightly poor condition.
 
Markets participants are closely watching China's winter wheat crops, due to concerns that domestic stocks will fall to critical levels sometime this year, after wheat output fell in the past five seasons since 1999.