Wheat and corn markets were generally down over the past week, but remain at pretty decent levels.

On 7 September, Matif wheat for December closed at €249.25/t. It generally declined after that and on Tuesday 15 September, closed at €241/t. The December 2027 price was at €237.50/t.

Corn followed a similar trend. Rapeseed for November was up and down. It closed on Tuesday at €554.25/t, down from €557.75/t. The November 2027 price was at €529.50/t.

US wheat was recovering somewhat this week from a quick drop. It hit 732.75c/bu on Tuesday, down from its peak of 774c/bu at the start of the month.

WASDE

In this month’s World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates (WASDE) report compiled by the US Department of Agriculture, global wheat supplies were estimated up 3.5m tonnes.

Australian production is raised 3m tonnes to 31m, with favourable conditions reported for crops. Canada is up 1m tonnes to 36m and Ukraine is raised 0.6m tonnes to 26m.

US corn supply is estimated down, while global coarse grain production is down 5.1m tonnes to 1.588bn tonnes.

Barley production was estimated up in Australia to a record 17.1m tonnes. That’s an increase of 3m tonnes in the month due to “favourable rainfall”. Barley exports are expected to increase for the country.

Interestingly the report expects smaller corn exports for Brazil due to higher domestic use for ethanol production.

News this week that the EU was opening the door for Canada to be an associate member will be watched closely.

Looking at grain, Canada imports hundreds of thousands of tonnes of maize into Ireland each year.

The news that US president Donald Trump intends to remove the current 10% tariff on Irish whiskey sold into the US was hugely welcome this week.

Details of when this tariff will be removed are yet to be announced. When tariffs were announced and before the amount was confirmed, malting barley markets took a hit and continued to, as uncertainty surrounded demand for Irish whiskey, with 40% of exports sold to the US.

An average price for October Free-On-Board Planet barley taken from the end of April to 9 September landed at €216.81/t.

We have no sight of the Boortmalt price average, but understand averaging may have stopped last week at around €219/t based on the July price.

If the €10/t charge is deducted from this as usual it leaves a poor return compared to feed barley.

Harvest prices

We expect price announcements from some of the co-ops in the second half of this week, but did not have any details before going to print.