French soft wheat exports are to recover strongly from multi-decade lows, led by a dramatic rebound in shipments outside the European Union, and helped by the strong quality of this year’s crop. French grains supply and demand in 2017-18, pegged soft wheat exports at 18.16m tonnes. That represents a 60% jump from the 11.34m tonnes shipped last season, the weakest in at least 25 years, when supplies were depressed by a rain-ravaged June. And the export recovery was seen as proving particularly strong in shipments outside the EU, which the official French crop bureau forecast more than doubling this season to 10.2m tonnes. The forecasts come despite expectations for strong competition on wheat export markets this season, spurred by a record Russian harvest, upgraded by the US Department of Agriculture on Tuesday to 81.0m tonnes, including the durum wheat used in making pasta.