December Arable Roundup

This articleis not full of Christmas Cheer unless you are needing to buy grains in the short term.

December has experienced more contract lows, market slides, speculators selling funds (a bearish factor) and buyers simply purchasing only what they require for short term needs.  There is little long term concern by consumers with high global and very high UK grain stocks.  In the first 4 months of the grain marketing year (July to October), about 500,000 tonnes were exported of wheat and also barley.

Export sales remain sluggish, Sterling remains strong (despite a small weakening in the last week) and, according to DEFRA, the wheat crop is slightly larger than they initially (provisionally) thought: all bearish factors.  So it goes on.

Global currencies have been playing games with grain values too.  The Argentinean Peso, being devalued by as much as 30% has made their grains and other exports the bargain of the year.  Anyone else wanting to compete with this will find the prices bid to them a little shocking at the moment.  The biggest restraint for Argentinean grains flooding the world market is they don’t have the logistics in place.  Also, their surplus of 6 million tonnes, whilst it is substantial, is not going to be enough to supply everybody. 

Following some delays shipping beans because of Egyptian cash flow problems, the trade has started moving again and shipments for the New Year are being organised.  Some store keepers though have reported that, with the warm weather, beans are not keeping well and human consumption beans are on some occasions being degraded.