Monday Market Briefing - 18th March 2024

All markets were slightly firmer in a week of mixed news on the supply side. We await US planting intentions in ten days time, but the AHDB have produced their own revised early bird survey for the UK – let’s call it a late bird survey shall we ? The last time it was necessary to revisit the November numbers was in 2020 when we had a similarly wet autumn planting campaign. It appears wheat plantings this time are actually lower than even that ill-fated campaign, but the rise in spring barley is rather less than back then. We seem to have lost almost 100,000 hectares overall in the intervening four years as the Governments dim-witted efforts to promote clumsy environmental initiatives continue.

Let’s import things we are perfectly capable of producing more cheaply ourselves  - that’ll help the balance of payments ?

Good news all round if you’re contemplating carrying feed wheat over and we can expect the market to stay supported this week.  At this stage it doesn’t matter too much for the market how low the supply numbers go, we have known for some time we are an importer again next season so we just need to find the price point where that works then make sure we have grabbed a big enough shopping trolley. Nov LIFFE traded Friday at an 8 Euro premium to the French market which should be high enough to attract both the EU milling wheat and EU maize that will replace the majority of the home shortfalls.

Have a good week.