MI Northern Ireland Market Report

Most global grain markets fell during last week.

A lack of bullish news and downward pressure from maize markets contributed to the bearish tone.

Additionally, lagging export sales of wheat from the EU and the US also contributed to the sliding global grain market.

Despite a slight reduction in domestic consumption, the UK wheat supply and demand balance is forecast to tighten for the third consecutive season in 2018/19, driven by a greater fall in total availability, according to initial forecasts from AHDB released last week. At 2.170Mt the UK wheat balance is 20% lower on the year.

Continuing the trend for ever increasing numbers of UK chick and poult placings, September has yet again broken records.

At 90.3 million placings, this is the highest number ever recorded by Defra during the month of September, up over 4% from the previous September high in 2017.

European rapeseed prices gained slightly last week, despite Chicago soyabean futures falling in response to slow US soyabean export sales.

Both the pound and euro weakened against the US dollar last week supporting European rapeseed values, though slow harvest progress in Canada was also potentially a factor.

However, the increased level of US soyabean imports into the EU-28 continues to act as a partial cap to European rapeseed prices.

EU-28 soyabean imports totalled 3.72Mt between 1 July and 14 October, up 12% on the same period in 2017/18, of which nearly 60% came from the US (EU Commission).