Unfavourable weather conditions throughout the growing season and fluctuating agronomic factors have conspired to decrease wheat and barley production in Türkiye in 2025. Conversely, corn output is tipped to grow on the back of a larger harvested area and access to critical irrigation water.
According to the Turkish Statistical Institute, the nation’s total grain production is projected to be 34.2 million metric tonne, a decline of 12.4 per cent compared to last year’s harvest, and significantly lower than the agency’s early-season forecast of 37.4MMT.
The Institute pegged wheat production at 17.9MMT, down 13.9 per cent from 20.8MMT in 2024 and 1.7MMT below the early-season estimate of 19.6MMT. The United States Department of Agriculture held its official number firm at 19.0MMT in last week’s global supply and demand update, off a harvested area of 7.3 million hectares. However, the USDA’s Ankara bureau of the Foreign Agricultural Service believes the harvest was much worse, revising output down in its late-November update to 16.3MMT off the same harvested area.
While the harvest was smaller, the quality of this year’s wheat crop is considered extremely good, with most meeting milling-grade specifications. Around 3.5MMT is expected to be durum, which primarily goes into pasta products for both the domestic and export markets.
Domestic wheat consumption is expected to decrease slightly from 19.1MMT in the 2024/25 marketing year (June to May) to 18.7MMT in 2025/26, primarily due to a drop in the availability of feed wheat following this year’s harvest. Food, seed and industrial consumption are forecast to be unchanged at 18.2MMT, while feed and residual use are forecast to drop from 900,000 metric tonne to 500,000 metric tonne.
The drop in production means that Türkiye’s wheat import requirements in the 2025/26 marketing year will need to increase significantly to meet projected demand. The FAS has pegged imports at 7.3MMT, in line with the average of the past decade, but more than double the 3.0MMT imported in 2024/25, after the government suspended the import regime to encourage drawdown of record inventories. A significant proportion of the nation’s wheat imports are expected to be sourced from Russia, with the latest deal for 300,000 metric tonne of Russian milling wheat announced in late November.
Around two-thirds of wheat imports will be used to make flour and pasta for the export market, while the balance will be used to make flour and a variety of other wheat-based products for the domestic market. Import demand could easily be higher if flour exporters weren’t confronted with sluggish demand from key international markets.
The Turkish Statistical Institute is calling the 2025 barley crop 6.0MMT, down 25.9 per cent year-on-year, and 20 per cent below the early season forecast of 7.5MMT. The drop in output is expected to impact the domestic feed grain market significantly and could flow through to higher retail prices for some food products and beverages.
The USDA’s official production number of 6.1MMT in its December update is in line with the government’s thinking off a harvested area of 3.5 million hectares. However, the FAS is far more pessimistic at 5.1MMT, on the back of a much lower average yield and a slightly lower harvested area of 3.4 million hectares.
According to FAS, barley consumption will fall by 500,000 metric tonne to 6.9MMT in 2025/26. Use by the stockfeed sector is forecast to account for all of that decline, falling from 6.5MMT to 6.0MMT, while food, seed and industrial use, primarily malt for the domestic beer market, is projected to remain steady at 900,000 metric tonne.
Extremely tight barley carry-in stocks from 2024/25 mean that imports are projected to surge from around 250,000 metric tonne last season to 1.6MMT in the current marketing year, despite the forecast fall in domestic demand. Black Sea exporters such as Ukraine, Romania and Russia are Türkiye’s traditional barley suppliers.
The corn area harvested in the 2025/26 program is expected to increase by 10.7 per cent, from 560,000 hectares last year to 610,000 hectares, as growers favoured second-crop corn plantings over cotton, vegetables and other summer grown row crops. With the corn harvest winding down ahead of winter, this switch is projected to push output 12 per cent higher in 2025/26 to 7.9MMT.
While still extremely buoyant, Türkiye’s corn consumption is forecast to drop from the 2024/24 record of 11.8MMT to 11.0MMT in the current marketing year. The 2025/26 projection assumes a normalised and relatively stable demand profile across both the animal feed and starch industries. Consumption growth in recent years has been primarily driven by the relatively rapid expansion of the local poultry industry.
With the increased availability of corn in 2024/25, stockfeed manufacturers began to substitute more corn for barley in stockfeed rations, especially later in the season when domestic barley prices began to increase. At the same time, the starch sector increased its food-grade corn consumption compared to the previous year.
Higher domestic corn production and a higher carry-in from last season are expected to be reflected in a decrease in corn imports from 5.7MMT in 2024/25 to 3.3MMT in the 2025/26 marketing year. Ukraine has traditionally been Türkiye’s largest supplier (over 4.0MMT in 2024/25), with Russia and Romania also regular, but lesser, contributors.
Meanwhile, the government has made a significant move to bolster supply security and curb feed grain costs by raising its zero-duty import quotas for barley and corn to 1.0MMT each, a substantial increase from the 700,000 metric tonne individual ceiling previously in place.
Published on November 8, the Presidential Decree became effective immediately and authorises the Turkish Grains Board to import the additional volumes without being subject to customs duties. The Ministry of Trade said the quota expansion seeks to meet domestic demand, curb speculative pricing and reduce input costs for livestock producers.
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Written by Peter McMeekin.
