THE forecast for Philippine wheat imports has been downgraded 3% to 7.2 million metric tons (MMT), the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) said, citing weaker demand from the animal feed industry.
In a report, the USDA cut its forecast for the 12 months to June 2026 marketing year from the 7.4 MMT estimate in May.
The Philippines does not produce wheat, importing milling wheat for human consumption and feed wheat for animal feed.
The USDA’s Foreign Agriculture Service in Manila has detected softening feed wheat demand in the Philippines, with feed manufacturers shifting their preferred raw material to corn.
Feed wheat is substituted for feed corn when the global price of wheat is more competitive than that of corn.
Feed corn prices are expected to drop in the 2025-2026 marketing year due to increasing global corn production.
In the second half of 2024, the price of imported feed wheat exceeded that of imported corn by $12.22 per MT.
The USDA also downgraded its estimate for Philippine wheat imports in the current market year — the 12 months to July 2025 — to 6.8 MMT from the previous 7.2 MMT projection.
The latest estimate, if borne out, would represent a decline from the actual import total of 6.9 MMT in the 2023-2024 marketing year.
The US was the largest supplier of wheat to the Philippines last year, supplying 2.7 MMT. Other sources were Australia, Brazil, and Canada. — Kyle Aristophere T. Atienza