Western Australian wheat area is likely to fall in 2025, said Giwa

The amount of land planted with wheat in Western Australia will decrease by around 400,000 hectares, or 9%, this year partly due to the lower availability of land, an industrial association said on Friday.

The Western Australian Item Industry Association (Giwa), in its first report on the planting season, estimates that 4.19 million hectares in the state will be planted with wheat, down from 4.59 million years ago.

“There is a large area sprinkled for cereal in 2024, which is not available for planting in 2025,” Giwa said.

However, he predicted that the area for planting wheat and canola would rise, with 1.87 million hectares of wheat to be sown, up from 1.77 million years ago, and 1,775 million hectares of Canola, up from 1.65 million hectares in 2024.

The southern part of the state, which competes with New South Wales as the top of Australian wheat producing regions, has humidity in the ground but the northern region is very dry, Giwa said.

“The total area planted can easily reach 9 million hectares, similar to last year, with Canola pushing well more than 1.8 million hectares if it rains,” the report said.

“But if it is dry and warm in May as an estimate, the plant area can go back to 8.5 million hectares as in 2023.”

Western Australia produced 12.45 million tons of wheat in 2024, the third largest harvest in the record. Sowing took place between April and June with harvests in the last month this year. The state exports most of its seeds.

Analysts estimate that the total production of Australian wheat will go by about 16% this season due to drought in several main planting areas.
Source: Reuters