New demands for biofuels and fodder compete with badly needed food to supply a growing world population. Cereal production has to comply with more stringent quality and food safety standards.

Create a custom printable guide to Cereals

Cereals are grasses cultivated for the edible components of their fruit seeds and include staple crops like maize, rice, wheat, barley, sorghum and millet. They are central to food security and make up 80 to 90 percent of the world’s calorie supplies. Today, about 44 percent of cereal production is used for food. Apart from this continuously growing demand cereals are increasingly needed by other sectors. Cereal utilization as animal feed and industrial needs, especially biofuels, has been rising in recent years due to increased meat and dairy product consumption as well as rising fossil fuel prices. These demand factors coupled with climate change effects like droughts in major production regions have a large impact on world market prices for cereals. Moreover, the role of excessive speculation and its impact on price formation is a heated debate. Though having decreased from the record-high level in 2008, prices for cereals in 2010 are twice as high compared to ten years ago.

Global total cereal production in 2009 was about 2.3 billion tons.  Only about 300 million tons, i.e. about 13 percent were exported, because many countries tend toward self-sufficiency in their respective staple grains due to food security concerns. However, the value of exported cereals almost doubled in the last five years to a level of $ 80 billion, with wheat and maize accounting for roughly 41 and 26 percent of the total, respectively. The largest exporters of wheat are the United States, Australia, Canada, France and Russia. About half of all globally traded maize is exported by the United States. Other big exporting countries include Argentina, Brazil and France.  Rice accounts for about 17 percent of global grain exports and is particularly important in that it makes up almost a third of the calories consumed in low-income countries. In 2009 the largest rice exporters were Thailand, Vietnam, the United States and Pakistan. Regarding developing countries’ export potential, focusing on regional trade in cereals is much more promising.

Some countries donate their surplus production, some say with the effect of discouraging local production in the target region. Other trade distortions such as temporary export bans for food staples are not uncommon. In addition, exporting countries have to meet increasingly stringent quality and food safety standards. For maize, particular attention is given to potential mycotoxin contamination. Mycotoxins are associated with fungal infection that occurs before harvest and can also be produced in grain during storage or processing. One type of mycotoxin, Aflatoxin, is mainly present on maize (and peanuts) and is considered one of the most important mycotoxin problems, especially for developing countries.  Another mycotoxin, Ochratoxin A, is mainly found on wheat and barley from temperate climates and on maize and rice from developing countries. Meeting safety requirements necessitates the establishment of testing laboratories with sensitive, accurate and precise methods of analysis and sampling.

Christoph Pannhausen (October 2010)