Dry conditions hit wheat crops in southern Australia
CANBERRA, Oct 18 (Reuters) -Persistent dry weather in southern regions of Australia that suffered frost damage last month is depressing wheat yields but the country could still produce an above-average harvest, analysts said on Friday.
Lower production in Australia, a major wheat exporter, would tighten a market grappling with dryness in Argentina, the United States and the Black Sea region.
Benchmark Chicago wheat futures Wv1 rose to a 3-1/2-month high this month from a four-year low in July. GRA/
The Australian government in early September forecast a 31.8 million metric ton harvest, well above last season's 26 million tons and the five-year average of 29.8 million tons.
However, severe frost across the southeast in mid-September forced analysts to cut their estimates, and dry conditions in South Australia and parts of Victoria have persisted.
"South Australia and Victoria have deteriorated," said Commonwealth Bank analyst Dennis Voznesenski. "Some farmers are not going to bother harvesting at all. They are cutting for hay."
South Australia is set to produce 2.8 million tons of wheat and Victoria 3.6 million tons this year, he said.
That compares to average production over the last five years of 4.7 million tons in South Australia and 4.6 million tons in Victoria, according to government data.
"We're pulling our national crop estimate back by half a million tons," said Ole Houe, a director at IKON Commodities.
"Primarily that's because of South Australia. They didn't get rain," he said, predicting the state would produce 3.5 million tons of wheat.
Still, overall Australian production should come in around 30.6 million tons helped by large harvests in Western Australia, New South Wales and Queensland, where conditions have been better, Voznesenski said.
The harvest has already begun in northern cropping areas and will ramp up as it moves south in the coming weeks.
Analysts are keeping an eye on weather forecasts from Australia's Bureau of Meteorology that predict above-median rainfall in many cropping zones, particularly on the east coast, in the peak harvest months of November and December.
Too much rainfall during harvest would lower the quality of grain.
Reporting by Peter Hobson; Editing by Jacqueline Wong
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