Wheat : Waiting for Brazil to change its consumption habits (ENGLISH)

The speakers explained that the countries of the Southern Agricultural Council (CAS) are very limited in terms of wheat production and exports as they barely represent 3 and 4 percent of the global market respectively. Yasky explained that Argentina produces 58% of the 693 million tons of wheat that the CAS produces annually. Another category in which Argentina leads in the region is wheat consumption with 95 kilos per person. This last figure was compared with the 38 kilos per capita consumed annually by Brazilians, which unveils, according to Yasky, “the great potential of the South American giant if it ever decides to switch its consumption habits from rice to wheat."

Meanwhile, Souto agreed that CAS is not a big global exporter and attributed it to the fact that "much of the production is destined for intra-regional consumption". He also supported the idea that Brazil is the big market that all regional producers are targeting. Likewise, Souto took the opportunity to remind the concerns about the instability of the Mercosur’s Common External Tariff, which he considered to be high and should be subject to further discussion by the bloc’s member countries. Finally, and approaching a more global picture, the Uruguayan official noted the steady increase in wheat demand, mostly driven by Asia’s consumption, and lamented the current production decrease due to climatic difficulties as it were the cases of Australia and the Black sea area.