More beer, less bread: wheat board
<a href=winnipeg.cbc.ca>URL Web Posted | Mar 27 2003 07:30 AM MST
WINNIPEG - A worldwide increase in beer consumption is good news for Canadian barley growers, according to the Canadian Wheat Board's long-range grain trade forecast, released Wednesday.
The wheat board predicts Canadian malt barley exports will grow by 60 per cent over the next eight years. Most of the increased sales will be exported to China.
"Just kind of as we're speaking, China has just overtaken the U.S. as the world's largest beer producer," says wheat board analyst Peter Watts, adding that there's still room for growth in the country. "Remember, China has four times the people as the U.S. does, so on a per-capita basis, we're still only forecasting China to consume just over 21 litres of beer per head."
He says while beer drinkers in China quaff more brews, Canadians continue to tip back even more: "In North America, we're somewhere around 75 litres per head on an annual basis, which is remarkable when you think about [it]. If you exclude all the people under 15 and 16, the rest of us drink a hell of a lot of beer."
While beer drinking is on the rise, bread eating is not. The wheat board says world wheat consumption is going down; Watts says that's partly because rising incomes are resulting in people eating more meat. Canadian wheat sales are expected to remain flat over the next several years.
• Forecasts not very accurate •
Brian White, vice-president of the wheat board, admits the eight-year forecasts are not very accurate, but he argues they are useful.
"The accuracy has not been within 10 per cent or 20 per cent, but that is not necessarily where the payoff is. The issue is more in the micro, the nitty-gritty, like projecting the direction of specific markets. For instance, are they going to eat more pasta in Venezuela?"
White said the impact of the war in Iraq was not factored in to the long-range grain forecast. However, he says that in the short term, Iraq will need to import more grain.