Wheat

We have seen a month of extremes again with the wheat market rallying back up to £210 on November futures following the attempted coup military coup in Russia and continued dry weather across the US, before settling back down circa £192. This shows just how nervous and overly sensitive these markets still are which makes reading and reacting to them extremely difficult.

It feels as though the market tries to bring itself back to around the £200 mark at the moment as the new normal and it will take some sustained weather stories to break much higher than that but equally, with the USDA forced to reduce crop predictions for this coming season on maize and that already having been taken into account into global grain figures, it doesn’t feel like we are too far away from the bottom of the market so perhaps it is more how high could these markets move if say anything did flair in Russia or there was a weather story which developed across Europe.

Soya

Soya prices had been moving lower with the US crop progressing well despite patches of dry weather, and a large South American crop already being talked about for next season, however the USDA report this week delivered a shock, reducing the US yield projections by 5% from 2023 but increasing corn which was expected to be reduced. The market is now waiting to see if this corrects next month as we reach the crucial pod development stage for beans.

Organic

Organic prices appear to have found a level at the moment which is generating new crop trade and origins are likely to be Romania and Kazakhstan this coming season. The premiums for organic at these origins though are low compared with conventional which would suggest that some parcels may start to be shipped as conventional because it is simply just not worth the hassle, and this then tends to be the catalyst for prices starting to move upwards.

India soya suppliers are in the process of re registering for their organic status after the EU removed all bodies from their approved organic suppliers, which meant the UK followed suit. This is likely to be August/September before we know if any are successful which means it is more than likely soya supply will switch to Chinese certainly in the short term. This means lower quality protein which could bring in some other alternative protein sources into organic diets in order to be able to balance that.

Regards,

Kay Johnson & Martin Humphrey