October 28, 2013

The Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA), one of the nation's largest banks, has still revised down the country's expected wheat production despite good spring rain in Western Australia.

The Bank now expects just 23.6 million tonnes of wheat will be harvested in 2013, which is mostly due to the harsh spring that farmers experienced across the Eastern sea-board.

That was unable to be off-set by the higher than average yields in Western Australia (WA) and South Australia, according to commodity strategist Luke Mathews.

"Very mild temperatures, and most importantly consistent rainfall, and as a result of that we've lifted our WA wheat crop forecast from around seven million tonnes in August to over eight million tonnes today. We've seen Australia's winter grain and oilseeds prospects fluctuate consistently throughout the 2013 growing season," Matthews said.

He added that the fluctuation not only relates to big contrasts in terms of individual regions, in terms of how they are tracking through the season, but they've also seen a significant contrast develop between prospects on the east and west coasts of Australia.