Large wheat crop but EU rapeseed prospects remain poor
Uncertainty remains as to the size of the US maize crop area.
The French soft wheat harvest was 87% complete in the week to 29 July, it said. The Ukrainian winter wheat harvest was also 87% complete on August 1, and yields are reportedly up 30% year on year at 4.6t/ha, found the report from the AHDB market intelligence team.
Rapeseed production
In terms of the outlook for rapeseed, they said disappointing UK yields were confirmed by a harvest report released last week, while they added that EU rapeseed production prospects remain equally poor.
Paris rapeseed futures closed at €374.50/t on Friday, dropping €4.00/t week-on-week, they reported.
Although UK production prospects remain unchanged based on last week’s harvest report, the prospects for German and French rapeseed production have been lowered, said AHDB. Ukrainian and Russian rapeseed will be required to fulfill some of the shortfalls within the EU.
Looking at the soybean market, the AHDB team noted the worsening of the trade relationship between the US and China. US President Trump is threatening further tariffs and there are reports China will halt imports of US products, so old soybean crop stocks remain heavy. Good US weather is improving new soybean crop prospects, they added.
The bearish news in the US pushed soybean prices down last week. Chicago soybean futures (Nov-19) lost $11.94/t to close Friday August 2 at $319.09/t.
Bearish feel to barley markets
The AHDB reported a largely bearish feel to barley markets globally. The harvest data released last Friday showed that the UK winter barley harvest is 49% complete, with very good yields anticipated. With export markets potentially limited beyond October 31, a large crop could pressure prices in surplus regions like the South and East of England, forecast the AHDB specialists.
Meanwhile, they also referenced the latest statistics for barley usage in compound feed production in the UK. The data, published last week, showed barley use in feed was up month-on-month in June, while maize usage reached 652Kt last season, 88.2% up year-on-year.
Animal feed production data
In that same data set, animal feed production in the UK was up 4.3% for pigs in June 2019 but down 0.9% for poultry, while also 4.4% lower for cattle and calves and 15.3% lower for sheep compared to June 2018.
For the 2018/19 crop year, the data indicated that UK feed production was relatively unchanged for poultry (+0.3%), cattle and calves (0.0%) and pigs (-0.2%), while sheep feed production decreased by 10.2% compared with 2017/18.
