An active effort to purchase Irish grain at harvest is already pushing green barley prices to €175/t and higher. Many merchants around the country are now talking about this price level for 20% moisture barley, which has been mooted for months.

There is little doubt but that there will be less native grain in circulation after this harvest. There were fewer acres planted to higher-yielding winter crops and a proportion of the normal spring crop area was sown to forage crops like maize and fodder beet.

Wholecrop

This scenario is added to by the significant increase in the areas already harvested for wholecrop use, thus removing both grain and straw from the market. And, so far at least, average yields are down on last year.

The reduction in available tonnage is leading to significant competition at merchant and user level to secure supplies at harvest.

This is exacerbated by the fact that some believe that imported prices are likely to increase substantially after the turn of the year, as global production of both feed wheat and barley is likely to be tight.

While futures prices continue to follow weather-related trends, merchants and users of grain in Ireland appear to be taking the view that the cheapest grain that they may buy this year will be at harvest time.

There are already reports of undried barley trading for above €182/t and that farmer-to-farmer business for green barley has taken place at €190/t.

However, the price of imported maize and whether or not an import tariff will apply will have a big impact on the purchase decisions of some of our big feed producers.