Monday Market Briefing - 24th June 2024

Markets remain very quiet but still tending to drift lower as buyers wait on the sidelines. A spell of fine weather this week will coincide with the start of the French barley harvest and a first sight of the yield and quality we can expect from this year’s European grain crops. Markets may well take their next direction from this news as it emerges during the week.  

Our annual spring barley tour took place last week, visiting five farms this year focussed on the Poole catchment area. After the horrendous early drilling situation it was a welcome sight to see healthy crops in the field. Overall crops looked promising although there was some caution over likely yield potential. The maltsters present could not foresee early demand playing a big part this season, last years crop exhibited some dormancy even in the south where this is fairly unusual these days. Hopefully if we get a dry open harvest we wont have the same issue this year but it still looks likely early movement will be mostly into store to wait for later shipments. There is some limited space remaining for malting barley storage into Shoreham if you would like to move this crop at harvest.  

With our hugely successful trial events now finished for this year, this week sees the last of our grain breakfast meetings with events at The Bear, Hungerford ( Wed 26th ) and Singing Hills GC, Hurspierpoint ( Tues 25th) . If you haven’t managed to catch one of these yet, and would like to come along give the grain office a call on 01243 755650 to book your breakfast.  

Have a good week.