The Easter break was a quiet period for markets generally and prices have continued to drift lower. That said, a £4 rally late Friday came completely out of the blue, leaving us near unchanged on the week. On the face of it there was no news on Friday that wasn’t already known earlier in the week, the perilous state of US wheat crops is offset by excellent conditions in Europe and corn plantings in US are slightly ahead of schedule - so we have an interesting week ahead to see if this follows through into better prices or not. China has, as expected, got back together with her old flame Australia, and they are also still keen buyers of US corn. Markets have become entirely sceptical of Russian pronouncements regarding the grain corridor but maybe there is a sense here that China might just know something about what’s coming that the rest of us don’t ?

The Chinese/Aussie rapprochement is potentially pretty bad news for European barley markets which are temporarily chaotic as everyone tries to remember what they did with the crop in the years before China got involved. A smaller UK surplus of spring barley is on the cards this year with reduced plantings, but this will potentially be trading into a much larger European surplus than we have been used to seeing in recent years. As always our best weapon in these circumstances is to have a high quality crop that people will want to buy so hopefully some more spring like weather in the forecast this week will help us in that direction.

Spot interest for old crop balances at home is sporadic but it keeps popping up. We have good demand for most milling grades including top spec as well as oats feed and milling. Call your farm trader for latest values. MAY LIFFE futures has become highly technical now as that position approaches expiry and position holders, longs and shorts, scramble for the exit. Hence we can expect some wild swings and roundabouts on that contract and it is NOV LIFFE from now on which will be the better guide as to what is actually happening in real markets.

Have a good week.