Monday Market briefing - 23rd August

After a very disrupted harvest so far, the UK is looking at 7 days of unbroken fine weather which should allow many farmers in the South-East to finish combining. Further west, harvest will continue into September as later maturing crops have weathered the rain events and should retain much of their quality.

For the wheat, Hagberg falling numbers have started to deteriorate in the past few days – particularly in Skyfall. The good news is that most of the Group 1 crop has already been harvested and is safely in the barn. Overall we are looking at a lower bushel weight crop (74-78 kg/hl) due to the lack of sunshine in June/July which failed to encourage grain fill. Protein levels are naturally higher and therefore we have a highly workable and blendable crop – particularly important with the high wheat demand into Iberia due to production issues in France.

The pass rate for spring malting barley remains very high with robust germination levels.  Similar to the wheat, retention levels are lower than average due to the lack of grain fill experienced earlier in the year.  However, with large malting premiums available, we believe that demand for quality material will extend throughout the season; the UK supplying malting barley into the EU as beer consumption recovers from the effects of coronavirus lockdowns.  Contact your farm buyer for prices to secure spot or pre-Xmas movement for malting barley.

This week we load another feed barley vessel at Shoreham Silos, so please speak to the Grain Desk about any available stem – winter or spring barley.