BAKU, Azerbaijan, March 6. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has revised its forecast for global cereal production in 2022 upward by 9 million tons, compared to the previous month, Trend reports via the latest crop prospects from FAO.
According to the report, world cereal production now stands at 2.77 billion tons. However, this is still 1.3 percent lower year-on-year.
"The bulk of the upward revision concerns rice and, to a lesser extent, coarse grains that largely reflect the incorporation of recently released official figures," FAO noted.
In particular, the projection for the rice production has been raised by 4.9 million tons to 517 million tons (milled basis), which, while being 1.5 percent below the 2021 record high, would still constitute an higher-than-average harvest, the report noted.
"At 2 780 million tons, the forecast for global cereal utilization in 2022/23 is nearly unchanged compared to figures in February 2023 and still pointing to a decline of 0.6 percent below the 2021/22 level. Following a 1.4-million-ton downward revision this month, total global utilization of coarse grains is forecast to fall in 2022/23 by 1.5 percent below the 2021/22 level stemming from anticipated contractions in the utilization of all major coarse grains (maize, barley and sorghum). By contrast, FAO’s forecast of global rice utilization in 2022/23 has been raised by 0.5 million tons to 520 million tons, but still falls marginally below the 2021/22 all-time high," the report added.
At the same time, the preliminary FAO global wheat production forecast for 2023 indicates a year-on-year decline, but at 784 million tons worldwide production will remain the second largest ever observed.