February 23, 2012

 

 

Because of a shortage of rail cars, Kazakhstan this year is unlikely to export more than 11 million tonnes of wheat of the 16 million tonnes it could have exported from its record 2011 crop, according to analysts, officials and traders.

 

"We expect the wheat exports will be no more than 11 million tonnes" for the 2011-12 marketing year, said Konstantin V. Kostenko, deputy head of DAN, a Kazakh joint venture with the world's largest agricultural commodities trader, Cargill Inc. "That means the carry-over (to the 2012-13 marketing year) will be five to six million tonnes," he added.

 

Dauren Oshakbayev, a grain analyst with the Kazakhstan Association of Economists, said he agreed with both figures.

 

Landlocked Kazakhstan's 2011 wheat crop of 21 million tonnes, coinciding with equally bountiful harvests in Russia and Ukraine, created a shortage of railway cars, which are required to carry the grain to other parts of Central Asia, deputy agriculture ministry Muslim Umiryayev said in Astana, the capital, according to local media.

 

It also reduced Kazakhstan's access to wheat-loading docks in Russian and Ukrainian ports of the Black Sea, from where they can be transported to markets in Europe and Africa.

 

Umiryayev Tueday predicted that the 2012 crop would be about 13 million tonnes, or the average of the last 12 years.

 

"That's quite realistic," Kostenko said, noting that the acreage devoted to wheat this year is slightly smaller than last year (13.5 million acres against 13.8 million, according to ministry figures). And, with the silos still full and more wheat stored in warehouses, where spoilage is greater, "An average crop next year would be a good thing," he added.

 

Still, a government analyst who asked not to be identified said any forecast made in February had a wide margin of error. He said rainfall, which determines quantity, and temperature, which determines quality, are hard to predict this early in the year.

 

Wheat growers in Kazakhstan are in the process of switching from old Soviet technology to modern methods using late-model farm equipment and more inputs, so the output's sensitivity to weather is still unclear.

 

"Once the whole country has switched to these methods and we have a 10-year record of temperatures and yields, then we can make accurate predictions," he said.

 

Kazakhstan, which is four times the size of Texas, is the world's six-largest wheat exporter. The 2011 harvest, coming after the drought-stricken 2010 one of just 10 million tonnes, was Kazakhstan's largest since 1956, when 19 million tonnes were produced.