Farmers in Western Australia continue to warehouse their grain to avoid AWB’s national pool, despite claims by some in the industry that such a practice is detrimental to the future of a single-desk marketing system.
Farmers in Western Australia continue to warehouse their grain to avoid AWB’s national pool, despite claims by some in the industry that such a practice is detrimental to the future of a single-desk marketing system.
Figures released by the Pastoralists and Graziers Association of WA reveal that about 80 per cent of wheat remained in warehousing, or consigned to grain traders, predominantly Cooperative Bulk Handing Group, which is currently having its wheat export application reviewed.
Earlier this month, the CBH Group’s estimated wheat pool prices fell by $5 per tonne, to between $260 and $270 per tonne. AWB’s national pool prices for 2006-07 benchmark APW estimated pool returns fell by $8 a tonne to $242, as a result of a decline in US wheat futures and cash prices.
WAFarmers president Trevor De Landgrafft said it was important for growers to support the single desk by consigning their wheat to the national pool.
“If growers are not selling wheat to the current single desk manager, they are not supporting their single desk, no matter what they may say or do in other contexts,” he told WA Business News.
Mr De Landgrafft said the future of the single desk lay with the decisions made by individual grain growers as to where they sold their wheat.
He said any permits to export wheat outside the single desk would not affect those who delivered to the national pool.
According to PGA Western Graingrowers chairman Leon Bradley, growers were making sensible business decisions in holding the grain from AWB at the possibility of receiving permits to export wheat at higher prices.
“PGA members, and other growers, are sick and tired of being told what they should do with their wheat,” he said. “That decision rightly belongs to individual growers.”
PGA has recently said CBH’s offer of a premium on two million tonnes of WA wheat was the best short-term chance WA wheatgrowers had of avoiding the poor performance and undeclared liabilities of AWB.
The news comes at a time when the AWB has been stripped of its power of veto over export applications, which is now in the hands of Agriculture Minister Peter McGauran for a six-month period.
As his first priority with the veto power, Mr McGauran has been urged to approve CBH’s wheat export application to allow WA growers the opportunity to receive higher prices by supplying wheat directly to CBH’s Asian flour milling joint venture, Interflour.
According to a CBH spokesperson, a decision over CBH’s application should be made as soon as possible in time for the 2006-07 harvest.
Applications for bulk wheat exports this year closed last Friday, with Mr McGauran saying a number of applications to export bulk wheat had been submitted to the Wheat Export Authority following the government’s decision to transfer the veto of bulk wheat exports.
Under the changes announced earlier this month, Mr McGauran has the power to direct the WEA to approve or reject bulk export applications where it is in the public interest.
Meanwhile, production of the major winter grains in WA is forecast to be just over half of last season’s production, according to the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics’ Australian Grains Outlook for 2006-07 and Industry Productivity report.
The report said wheat production was forecast to be 4.9 million tonnes, while world wheat prices are forecast to increase in response to reduced global supplies.
