Monday Market Briefing - 11th May 2026

Last week, exchanges gave up all of the gains made in the previous week. In fact, in the six weeks since I last sat down to write this report Nov26 LIFFE has moved precisely £0.05. We have had some gyrations in the meantime but with two inherently bullish stories running in tandem, the war and the US drought, combined with a general lack of farmer selling – it is remarkable how little progress prices have made. Probably, we will look back on this period as being a big clue to the shape of next seasons markets. Markets that fail to go up, usually come down.  

This week we have the next major USDA report which will update their view on 2026 production worldwide. Some downward revision of wheat output is likely but it’s not expected to be a market mover with stocks already deep and healthy. Trump is visiting China later in the week and we’ve seen a more vocal China recently ahead of that meeting – perhaps they will be the key to brokering an end to the war and getting ships moving again.

UK crops could do with some more of the rain which fell mostly across France recently, but in the cool weather they still look excellent across the south. The performance of fodder crops will have a bearing on feed grain prices into new crop, which could be one of the key differences between next years campaign and this one.

Have a good week.