Wheat varieties

[cakadu]

Charlie, I have a question for you that has arisen in the Rural Issues room, under the livestock profitability topic. We were talking about grains and I suggested that I understood why wheat was grown as it has more drought resistance, lower input costs etc. and asked about growing a variety of wheat that would make better Chinese noodles, for example. You could still grow wheat for all of the reasons that you grow wheat, but would hopefully be growing a variety that would have greater potential of being in demand and giving some hope of a return.

I was asked the following: Is this wheat that is used to make chinese noodles
worth more than regular hard spring wheat? Because if it isn't there isn't much point in growing it as far as I can see. But I stand to be corrected and hopefully can be. It is only to all our wheat growers benefit to change to something that will make money.

Not being up on commodity prices, I can't answer this question. Have you got any suggestions/ideas/comments? I'm curious to know.

It's not something everyone can grow because that will just force prices down. How would you envision setting something up that would allow for a limited production but not to the point that it would cause prices to go downward?

[charliep]

The Chinese will buy a mid quality wheat for their noodle market. They buy on the basis of price versus quality characturistics once a wheat class has met their minimum quality characturistics. This is changing somewhat as they move from state buying to individual mills but this will likely remain a commodity market.

The CWB has mainly sold lower protein 2CWRS and 3CWRS to this market in the early to mid 1990's when China was a major buyer (pretty much withdrawn in recent years). Prairie spring wheats do work in the noodle market but the older varieties have not had quality characturistics desired of the noodle market (too soft a wheat/low protein) - this is changing with new ones.

Our competition has mainly been Australian Standard wheat (ASW). This wheat has mainly been of better quality than our prairie spring wheats for the noodle market (bred to satisfy this market specifically). The second competition would be US hard red winter wheat. As a note, the CWB priced off US HRW wheat for Chinese sales when I was there (this was the competition).

If you are looking at quality characturistics to satisfy this market, the direction of our wheat program would be to develop more white wheats (likely CPS white but the new white hard red springs may fit the need). Consumers want a nice crystal white noodle. With red wheats like CPS reds and CWRS, there tends to be some flecking (some bits of the hull as I rememember it) which puts the color of the noodle off slightly.

China is a market wild card this year with expectation they will return to the market. Internal inventories are coming down. This would result in larger export demand and higher prices.

[cakadu]

Thanks for the info Charlie!