Consumption of soymeal on the wane

Global soybean meal consumption has declined in February partly due to weak demand in Asia resulting from the avian influenza outbreak, especially in Thailand and Indonesia.

According to data from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), the global consumption stood at 139.01 million metric tonne (MMT), a drop from 139.41 MMT last month.

Global production too dropped from 138.78 MMT in January to 138.54 MMT. The slight drop in global production to 240 thousand tonne, as well as a smaller decline in fishmeal, more than offset the modest gains in sunflowerseed meal, cottonseed meal and rapeseed meal.

Sunflowerseed meal production increased to 9.83 MMT in February from 9.70 MMT last month and rapeseed meal registered a minor rise to 21.48 MMT compared with 21.45 MMT earlier. Fishmeal fell to 5.60 MMT from 5.75 MMT.

The projection of global oilseeds production has, however, increased during the last month, by almost 180 thousand metric tonne to 345.9 million tonne in February, or 0.5 per cent above the previous month's estimate.

Most of the increase is due to a one million tonne rise in soybean production in Brazil. Additional increases in production include sunflowerseed, up 540 thousand tonne to just over 26 million tonne.

There were smaller increases in cottonseed production, as well as groundnut and rapeseed. Brazil's soybean export forecast rose 300 thousand tonnes while exports from Argentina fell by roughly the same amount.

On the other hand, India's soybean meal exports increased to 2.80 MMT from 2.60 MMT due to comparative advantage of lower freight rates than the pacific freight rates.