Monday Market Briefing - 6th October 2025

The IGC’s September report gives some context to the markets struggles. They see world grain output up 87 million tonnes this year, with good reports from southern hemisphere producers adding to the piles. Both wheat and corn set new annual records for a fourth consecutive year and the world supply of grains , that’s this year’s harvest combined with last year’s carry-over stock, will exceed 3 billion tonnes in 2025-6 for the first time. It’s abundantly clear that we don’t have any supply problems this year but, as we’ve noted before, wheat stocks are actually declining slightly despite this back-drop so the market does remain vulnerable to crop failures in coming seasons, it’s just that they seem to have stopped happening.

Plenty of reports around that farmers in the south are well into their autumn drilling with some even finishing in September. It will be interesting to see if there is any shift out of spring barley given the desperate state of that market with potentially a bit more winter cropping going in instead. December’s early bird survey should give us a clue on that one, our first malting barley cargo of the new season has loaded in Shoreham, the quality reports at load confirming the excellent quality of this year’s crop in the south. Pretty much anything out of spec on nitrogen (or anything else) will disappear into feed in this market so supplies of good malting barley may actually tighten up after Christmas, whether that matters will depend on buyers actually wanting to buy anything or not.

Oats continue to trade into the domestic and export markets, available movement is largely post-Christmas now but talk to your farm trader if you have oats to place.

Have a good week.