Continually Developing UK Cereal Supply and Demand Statistics

Over the past two years, AHDB has been leading the development of more accurate and timely data for the cereals and oilseeds supply chain.

A key part of our independent data provision is the UK Cereals Supply and Demand balance sheets. This data is used by farmers, traders, processers, end-consumers and government to assess the ‘health’ of the cereals supply and demand and see how under or over supplied the market is likely to be for the season.

As we release the end of season 2020/21 balance sheets, it seems a timely moment to review the improvements in the balance sheets, assess where we still need to develop and how we are updating and improving our outputs in the future.

Declining residuals

For the 2019/20 wheat balance sheet, we included a ‘residual’ figure of 886Kt. This was essentially nearly 1Mt of wheat, which could not be accounted for in the figures.

In order to prevent this happening again, we have worked closely with Defra and key stakeholders over the past year through our Audit Function Groups to improve data accuracy.

One key success of these talks has been for Defra to double the sample size of the on-farm stocks survey for England, as well as a continuing gap analysis of our usage data statistics. These combined have led to a drastic reduction in the residual figure this year to only 53Kt. This residual equates to only 0.36% of total supply, or 0.41% of total demand.

Areas to develop

Since the start of the new trading relationship with the EU at the beginning of the year, accurate trade has been a continuing point of discussion.  Over the course of the past year’s Audit Function Group meetings, we have had multiple discussions on how trade data could be more accurate and timely and fed this into Defra and HMRC. Discussions are ongoing as to if and how data accuracy can be developed for imports and exports and will remain a key part of AHDB focus as we move into a new year of balance sheets.

Future development

As we head into the 2021/22 year of balance sheets, we at AHDB are looking to deliver even more again, for users of the data.

The first new aspect is that we will be introducing two more balance sheets into the year to allow for more regular provision of data. We currently produce balance sheets for the season in October, November, February and May, with an end of season balance sheet in September once all the total season data is available. From 2021/22 onwards, we will move to publish in October, November, January, March, May, July and the end of season release unchanged in September.

The addition of a January and July update will include more key data at timely periods within the crop year, to better understand trade and stocks situations for domestic grains earlier in the season.

The second change is that we will be forecasting exports earlier in the year. Usually we produce exports in the May balance sheet. However, in order to provide a more accurate picture of exports and ending stocks earlier in the season we will start to forecast exports and stocks from January onwards.

We will continue to gather together with government and industry stakeholders to ensure that the data provided within the balance sheet is continually improved and updated. We will strive for better and build upon the positive change we have made in recent months.

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