Russia has exploded as a wheat exporter, tripling its sales in just a decade. By contrast, domestic consumption grew some but has been relatively stagnant the past few years. That has because the population has grown at just 0.15 percent per year and is forecast to fall going forward. Sensitive to public resistance to food price increases, the government has been using an export tax to meter how much of the nation’s wheat gets exported. Russia’s wheat stocks-to-use ratio is higher than it has been for six of the past ten years. As in other countries, the contributions to food price inflation are more diverse than just the bulk commodity value. If wheat is on average about 12 percent of the value of a loaf of bread, halving the...

TAGS – Wheat, Russia