It’s not unusual when we head into harvest season that farmers clear out bin space in anticipation of the new inventory.
The volumes they move can be an indicator of how they think the crop will run this year, but it also signals how the global marketplace is doing: are prices encouraging delivery or vice versa.
By extension, it also tells us how consumers are conducting themselves around the world.
Are they buying more or less pasta or baked goods, which impacts wheat deliveries, for example?
We’ve now got a look at stocks on hand in the system at the end of July which was the completion of the old crop year.
Wheat stocks were down 22-percent and about a third of that was from on-farm storage while the remainder was from commercial stocks such as terminals or processor facilities.
The reduction in canola stocks on farm was even more dramatic – down 70-percent as the crush industry pulls added volume forward.
Stocks of dry peas and lentils rose even though lentil exports grew by 10-percent.
