WASHINGTON, DC – The World Market Price subcommittee of USA Rice’s International Trade Committee met here this morning to discuss the domestic and global outlook for rice with representatives from the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS), the World Agriculture Outlook Board, the Economic Research Service (ERS), and the Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS), all agencies of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The subcommittee meets three times per year and the open dialogue between industry and the government are valuable to each.
Today, members of the subcommittee told NASS representatives that the 2016/17 projected planted acres in California were very low in the agency’s March Prospective Plantings report, and could, in fact, be 25 percent higher. Members also discussed the adjustment of ending stocks for 2015/16 reported by World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates (WASDE) that showed a jump from 90 million metric tons to 106 million metric tons between the April and May reports. Discussion focused on increases made in the WASDE to China’s rice stock numbers, which had the effect of raising global stocks. Information on rice stocks in China is not public, and even small percentage changes in China’s supply and utilization estimates can have a significant impact on the global balance sheet.
The subcommittee also heard from the Department of Commerce about antidumping and countervailing duty investigations – two important trade remedies under U.S. law to counter unfair foreign pricing and subsidies, (more on this in tomorrow’s USA Rice Daily).
Staff from FAS provided an update on the status of a phytosanitary agreement to export U.S. rice to China that remains initialed but not yet signed, and other key U.S. rice markets, including the tenuous political situation in Iraq where a sale of 90,000 metric tons of U.S. rice was recently completed, and Colombia where a new tender for more than 13,000 metric tons will go live just in advance of a USA Rice delegation traveling there next month.
“Today's meeting was full of important information for the U.S. rice industry as we face a projected increase in production in 2016/17,” said Keith Glover, Chairman of the World Market Price subcommittee. “Learning about the global trade outlook and about U.S. trade remedies for unfair competition will help us develop and preserve export markets.”
The next meeting of the subcommittee will be on October 19, 2016.