Monday Market Briefing - 31st July 2023

Daily volatility aside, markets have a sideways look to them again. Grain facilities appeared to be targeted by both sides in the war as Russia went after the lower Danube river and Ukrainian missiles landed over the border into the Rostov region. Harvest is underway everywhere in the northern hemisphere now – most think USDA crop predictions are still on the high side but point to exceptionally low export demand as the reason why lower production might not matter too much at least in the short term.

The AHDB plantings survey threw a curve-ball by indicating UK wheat acres down on 2022 and an increase in spring barley - not what we had been told to expect. It will be interesting to see if DEFRA concur when their own estimates come out shortly but it can only be good news if we have a larger spring barley crop to market abroad. More than half the spring barley crop in north-east France is still in the field and facing a weather forecast even worse than ours this week.

It does look like we are all in for a catchy difficult harvest this year with the next two weeks remaining very unsettled. The south-east is well ahead with perhaps 10-15% of the crops cut, milling wheats and maltings barleys are all showing very good quality, and combines were rolling over the weekend again. So far so good then, we have not seen any dip in quality in samples arriving at the lab yet and we can point to the wide variety of drilling dates for this years crops as reason to be hopeful for the later maturing ones coming through this weather unscathed.

We hold our breath and wish everyone the best of luck in getting their crops in.

Have a good week.