CANBERRA, March 5 (Reuters) - Wetter weather should boost Australia's winter wheat production to 28.4 million metric tons in the 2024/25 season from 26 million tons in the harvest that has just finished, the country's agriculture ministry said on Tuesday.
Barley and canola production will also increase, the ministry said.
Australia is one of the world's largest exporters of wheat and other farm products and greater output next year will increase global supply.
The recently harvested 2023/24 winter crops were hit early in the growing season by an El Nino weather event that brought with it dry conditions. But summer rains in recent months and a fading El Nino have improved the outlook.
"Good soil moisture bodes well," Emily Dahl, an economist in the agriculture ministry's forecasting division, told the ABARES Outlook 2024 conference in Canberra.
The area planted to winter crops should increase in 2024/25, particularly in Queensland and New South Wales, which were dry for much of 2023, she said, adding that exports in the 2024/25 season would also be above the long term average.
The ministry said it expected barley production to rise to 11.6 million tons in the 2024/25 season from 10.8 million in 2023/24 and for canola output to grow to 6.1 million tons from 5.7 million tons.
Total winter crop production should rise by 9% to 51 million metric tons in 2024/25, the ministry estimates.
Winter crops in Australia are planted from around April and harvested from around October.
Some weather models are predicting that El Nino will not only fade but shift later this year back to a La Nina phenomenon, which typically brings wetter conditions to Australia.
Dahl said this could lift Australian yields further. "There's certainly a lot of upside potential," she said.
The agriculture ministry said on Tuesday that Australia's 2023/24 winter crop was in line with the 10-year average but down 32% from 2022/23, a La Nina year that saw plentiful rain. (Reporting by Peter Hobson; Editing by Michael Perry)
