The strong dollar, climate change, rising competition, and stagnant yields have toppled the US from the top spot in wheat [Xinhua]Russia has become the world’s leader in the export of wheat, surpassing the United States and Canada, Russian Minister of Agriculture Alexander Tkachev said Thursday.
“Russia supplies about 25 million tons of wheat on the external market by the end of the agricultural 2016 year. We became the world’s leading wheat exporter, surpassing the United States and Canada,” Tkachev was quoted as saying by Russian news agency TASS.
According to the Ministry of Agriculture, Russia last year achieved record levels in the harvest of corn (13.2 million tons), rice (1.1 million tons), soybeans (2.7 million tons) and buckwheat (900,000 tons). The total grain harvest amounted to 104.8 million tons.
The international wheat export market, driven by a strong dollar, cheap oil and expanding harvests, is poised to shift this year, with once dominant exporting countries falling behind newly competitive ones, the Wall Street Journal reported earlier in February.
Russian Deputy Agriculture Minister Sergey Levin said Russia will start actively supplying wheat to China in the next harvest year.
TBP and Agencies
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