Miller Magazine Issue: 145 January 2022

92 MARKET ANALYSIS MILLER / january 2022 Ukrainian, depriving the Australian grain of a number of quality indicators. Do all of these have any matter on Turkish pricing? For sure: commodities trading stands on supply and demand. Countries are like connecting vessels. Turkey has a unique geographical location. It seems to connect Europe, Asia and Africa. Therefore, it is difficult to de- termine which market is more important but competition for grains between Africa and Asia is a part of Turkish daily reality. Asia spans from the shores of the Mediter- ranean to the Pacific, where the majority of the world's population lives - 4.5 billion people with different tradi- tions, history and culture. The region consumes more than 410MMT of wheat per year and is in short supply, al- though historically wheat originated and spread around the world from here, from Mesopotamia. Afghanistan is a major consumer of flour, mostly im- ported. Production - at the level of 4-4,5MMT, consump- tion - at the level of 8MMT. The country's flour mills are obsolete. Whether Afghanistan will cope with the need to import 3.5MMT in the absence of storage capacity and in the light of new realities is a question. Imports of flour, in particular from Uzbekistan, may increase, Mr. Alexan- der Gavrilov, head of Asian Sales division in Sodruzhest- vo told at Treng and Hedge Club. Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan are countries with high dependence on imports and consumption of bread per capita. In addition, there is no other feed grain than wheat. Countries depend on imports of Kazakh wheat, in particular for processing and re-export from Uzbekistan. Iran is one of the riskiest and premium markets, grain imports are regulated by the state. Ukrainian wheat was not allowed on the Iranian market. But at the same time, Iran is not very demanding on quality. Germany was one of the countries that advocated cooperation with Iran and will also supply there. Pakistan - recently appeared on the map as a bright importer. Wheat, as in other Muslim countries, is the ba- sis of the diet, increasing population and poultry produc- tion. Russian and Ukrainian wheat is imported duty free. China is a policy and a state regulation. The issue is huge stocks and at the same time ongoing imports of wheat. As long as corn was expensive, it made sense for fodder purposes, but as it gets cheaper, the question arises again. Obtaining permits for low-margin crops is not interesting. Mr. Gavrilov's opinion is shared by Max- im Minenko, head of the procurement department of the Chinese company Juisan Food. On the other hand, the question of demand remains open. China intends to sell 0.5 MMT of wheat from the state reserve in the coming days. The flour-milling industry is represented by artis-