Monday Market Briefing - 29th June 2026

As we anticipated last week, markets are in a quieter phase now, waiting for harvest news. Brent Crude closed Friday at exactly the same price it was the day before the Iran War started so presumably we will now see fuel prices falling as quickly as they went up? Grain prices did tick higher early in the week on worries about the extremely hot weather we had midweek, which may well have clipped the UK’s yield potential, but increasingly confident reports from Russia point to some huge yield potential in the south which could add 6 million tonnes to previous projections. So, with the 2026 world wheat crop seemingly in the bag, traders now look to corn for any bullish weather-related surprises, there is more hot weather affecting pollination in the US and Europe.

At home we saw the first winter barley samples late last week, kilo weights ranging from 63 to 70, not that we would ever be guilty of extrapolating from two samples to judge the whole crop ( ! ) , but a wide variation in sample results this year would not be a great surprise. There has been plenty of disease stress particularly on early drilled crops and the big differences in rain events from farm to farm this spring will also be a factor. Feed barley this harvest yet again is too expensive to export against stiff competition from Europe, so early trade will be limited to low volume domestic demand with any additional supply going into commercial storage.

Spring malting barley did show some price improvement, buyers wanting to cover malt sales found it impossible to extract offers from the trade with farmers understandably ignoring that sector at least until the crop is in. Despite the misery of the last eighteen months, it looks nailed on that springs will trade at useful premiums this year and you should not be in a hurry to let it go as feed this time round.

Have a good week.