01/20/05 Other non-traditional wheat exporters

01/20/05 Other non-traditional wheat exporters

Farm and Ranch January 20, 2005 When U.S. Wheat Associates vice president for overseas operations Vince Peterson spoke in the northwest recently about non-traditional wheat exporters he focused on the Black Sea region. A couple of countries Peterson didn't have time to address in his presentation were India and Pakistan, both of which have exported wheat in recent years. In an interview Peterson said that in his opinion India has reached what he calls a level of maximum self-sufficiency and won't grossly exceed production levels they have now. Peterson: "So I think we can expect India to be a minor exporter of wheat let's say in the next five or ten years. Every year I think they will for local reasons try to push a certain amount of wheat into the world market." But Peterson says they are doing that at some budgetary cost by subsidizing and selling wheat in export at a lower price than is provided to their farmers. Peterson: "So there is a bit of a WTO issue in India's ability to go forward with that kind of a program." Peterson thinks Pakistan was competing with India a couple of years ago with an "us too" mentality and believes those Pakistani wheat exports were an anomaly. Peterson: "They are back in as an importer again this year. Probably will import about one million tons of wheat. Already have imported I think about 300-thousand tons of U.S. soft white wheat in the market year-to-date, and I think we can expect Pakistan to return to an approximately two million ton importer over time, where India, we are not looking at that to be a market, but I don't think we will think of it as a big export competitor. Minor export competitor." I'm Bob Hoff and that's the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report on the Northwest Ag Information Network.
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