The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has lowered its global oilseed production forecast by 7M tonnes to 630M tonnes due to reduced Argentine soyabean, sunflowerseed and Indian cottonseed crops.
These changes were only partially offset by increases to Australian and Ukrainian rapeseed crops, according to the USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) ‘Oilseeds: World Markets and Trade’ March report.
Oilseed trade increased with higher volumes of soyabeans from Brazil and the USA, rapeseed from Australia and Ukraine, as well as cottonseed from Australia.
However, global production and trade of protein meals was down, mainly due to lower Argentine soyabean meal and Indian cottonseed meal.
“Despite overall reduced crush, total oil production is little changed overall in part due to increased palm oil. Oil trade is raised slightly on higher sunflowerseed oil from Turkey, Russia and Ukraine and Malaysian palm oil, partially offset by lower soyabean oil trade. Global ending stocks of oilseeds, meal and oil are all lowered notably,” the USDA report said.
The report noted that projected Argentine soyabean production had been lowered for the third consecutive month in the 2022/23 marketing year as hot and dry weather continued to strain the crop in key growing regions.
Argentina’s soyabean production forecast in March was down 8M tonnes to a 14-year low of 33M tonnes and crushing was forecast at its lowest level in over a decade.
“Plummeting Argentina supplies and crush will have implications on global trade of soyabeans, protein meal, and vegetable oils over the coming months,” the USDA said.
