FranceAgriMer officials had said last month they saw the potential to raise their export outlook to between 10 million and 10.5 million tonnes. France, the EU's top wheat producer and exporter, has seen brisk export demand in recent weeks as it has benefited from weather-related supply problems of other major exporting countries. This trend was highlighted by a two-year high for EU export licences last week.
FranceAgriMer cut French wheat exports within the EU to 7.3 million tonnes from 7.8 million last month, however. With the cut in one area balanced against the increase in the other, the office made only a small adjustment to its forecast for soft wheat ending stocks to 1.96 million from 1.95 million last month. Soft wheat stocks would still be down 14 percent on an estimated 2.28 million tonnes at the end of the 2011/12 season. FranceAgriMer made bigger increases to its forecasts for ending stocks in barley and maize.
It estimated 2012/13 barley ending stocks at 1.8 million tonnes, up from 1.4 million last month, due to a cut in expected exports within and outside the EU as well as a reduction in animal-feed demand in France. Maize ending stocks were revised up to 2.2 million tonnes from 1.9 million last month, as a sharp cut in exports to other EU countries offset a slight increase in domestic feed demand. The revisions meant barley stocks would be 45 percent higher than the 960,000 tonnes at the end of last season, although maize stocks would still be down 20 percent on the 2.4 million in 2011/12.