Hot winds severely damage Australian wheat

By Sambit Mohanty

PERTH (Reuters) - Hot winds this week caused severe damage to the Western Australian wheat crop, further reducing the country's already struggling crop, Western Australia's Agriculture Minister said late on Tuesday.

In an interview with Reuters, Minister Kim Chance said bad weather was likely to wipe up to 2 million tonnes from the national wheat crop.

"The hot, windy day this week caused huge damage so we saw a number of crops written down on Monday on the basis of one day's wind in Western Australia," Chance said.

"Our total wheat crop could be about 1 or 2 million tonnes lower than the lowest end of the projections made so far," the state Minister of Agriculture and Food told Reuters.

Australia's wheat crop nationwide has been hit with extremely dry conditions throughout August, particularly in the past two weeks, analysts said on Wednesday.

This has reduced almost all forecasts of the wheat crop to less than 20 million tonnes, Ron Storey, head of private forecaster Australian Wheat Forecasters, said.

ACF this week reduced its forecast to 19.5 million tonnes and even this was at the upper end of the range of forecasts, he said.

Other trade forecasts were for a crop of 18 million tonnes or even less, he said.