Canberra | Reuters — The Grain Industry Association of Western Australia (GIWA) slightly lowered its estimates for the state’s 2025/26 production of wheat, barley and canola on Friday but said the harvest of winter crops was still on track to be the biggest ever.
Harvesting in the state of Western Australia is around halfway complete.
WHY IT MATTERS: Western Australia is the largest crop exporting region of Australia, one of the world’s biggest shippers of grains and canola seed.
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In a monthly crop report, GIWA cut its estimate for Western Australian wheat production by 50,000 metric tons to 13 million tons.
It trimmed its expectations for barley by 50,000 tons to 7.42 million tons and for canola by 130,000 tons to 4.17 million tons.
Those forecasts compare with average production over the last five years in the state of 11.2 million tons of wheat, 5.2 million tons of barley and 2.8 million tons of canola.
Western Australia has been at the forefront of rising productivity in Australia, where farmers have increased yields despite declining growing-season rainfall.
GIWA said the speed of the harvest in some areas had put strain on infrastructure and logistics and in some cases slowed progress.
Wheat grain quality has been mixed but barley quality has been mostly very good, the higher-than-expected yields often being driven by larger seed size, it said.
Earlier this month, the Australian government said it expected national production this season of 35.6 million tons of wheat, the third-biggest harvest on record, 15.7 million tons of barley, a record amount, and 7.2 million tons of canola, the second-most on record.
Following are GIWA’s December estimates and comparisons with last month’s forecasts and last season’s production. Crop numbers are in metric tons.
— Reporting by Peter Hobson
