Market activity has been subdued recently with feed compounders interest declining rapidly as animals go out as the grass grows freely following the much needed rain seen in the last week of April.
On the back of this they appear a little overbought on cereals and have been rolling some purchases forward and/or changing formulations due to the imminent shortage of soya expellers.
Millers seem to have largely avoided buying further wheat despite the well reported surge in retail demand and have been using up pre bought stocks rather than buying in additional wheats. The already weak malt market has unfortunately diminished and some nice barleys are now being sold as feed grade since farms want to clear stores.
As mentioned above, recent rainfall will certainly have been welcomed on spring cropping areas after a very dry April – even those fields which were waterlogged not many weeks ago were desperate for moisture.
This will also help winter sown crops that had not needed to put down roots over winter.
We would welcome reports of your 2020 cropping development and areas, we can certainly expect a volatile market should the world ever return to normality – and we very nearly avoided mentioning Brexit!
