Mansour Subhi, an agriculture undersecretary, said yields were better than last year as the ministry silos received 135,000 additional tons this year. Iraqi grain growers have shipped nearly 1.4 million tons of wheat and barley to state silos this year, the Ministry of Agriculture said. Iraq has to import most of its food needs and as food prices soar on international markets the countrys food import bill is expected to balloon to nearly $5 billion this year. The bumper harvest comes amid...

Soybean prices are high because the updated weather forecasts for next week call for more stressful conditions in the U. Wheat: Futures spreads between deferred wheat contracts are narrower than those between the nearby spreads, indicating an increasingly bullish supply and demand situation as we move farther into the 2007-2008 marketing year. At this point, front-month prices are still in the upper 85th percentile of prices observed during the past five years. That supports corn, but more...

According to experts, cultivation of rice crops-summer rice or sathi and the monsoon rice- has aggravated the groundwater depletion. Experts say the crops, if sowed late, consume less water, eventually helping in saving groundwater. However, unlike paddy, these crops don't enjoy support prices. In a desperate move to arrest the falling water table, the State Electricity Board restricted power supply to the farmers. Last year, the state recorded 1.86 per cent growth in farming. The move...

Wheat prices yesterday rose to an 11-year high on fears that heavy rains in France, Europe's largest wheat producer, and the UK would dent already stretched supplies. Agricultural prices climb. US farmers last week exported 2.08 tonnes of wheat, the largest weekly amount since June 1996, as tight supplies from Europe and Australia force importing countries, such as Bangladesh, to look elsewhere, The European Union this week said the total cereal crop in 2007 would be 1.6 per cent below the...

Analysts took this strong demand for wheat, even amid record-high prices, as a bullish indication for wheat prices. While both Australia and the Ukraine have been suffering through droughts for weeks, major European wheat growers were hit with a deluge of wet weather this week. Only time will tell how much damage was done to the European wheat crop, but any significant losses could push wheat prices still higher. Heavy rains and localized flooding in Germany, France and Britain have...