The total area expected to be sown to cereals for harvest in 2018 is estimated to be up 19% on last season, mainly due to an increase in the area sown in feed barley. At October 10, 81% of sowing had been completed.
Feed barley area is expected to jump 59% this season. It’s expected that a total 55,433 hectares will be sown in feed barley for harvest in 2018. While this is a huge jump against last year, it actually takes feed barley area back to more historical levels. Between autumn/winter and already completed spring sowing, the majority of this area had been sown at October 10, but there was still 19,470ha yet to be sown at the time of the survey (35% of the total area). Quite a lot more barley has been going in over recent weeks, so feed barley area is likely to be up substantially. Just 43% of this area has been forward sold. While a low amount this is more than at the same time last year when 29% of the area had been forward sold. Growers will likely be relying on the spot price for feed barley staying high instead of contracting.
Malting barley area is also up, though by a much smaller amount than feed quality barley. A total of 12,320ha of malting barley is expected to be sown for harvest in 2018, up 13% on last season. Nearly all – 90% – of the malting barley area has been forward sold.
Wheat is mixed. Feed wheat area is expected to be up 4%, totalling 38,946ha; while milling wheat area is expected to be down 5%, totalling 14,868ha. Less than half of the wheat crop has been forward sold – 43% of milling wheat and 46% of feed wheat. Last year 75% of the milling wheat crop had been sold by October. Nearly all of the wheat area had been sown by October 10. There was 360ha yet to be sown for milling wheat (2.4% of the total area) and 650ha yet to be sown for feed wheat (1.6% of the total area).
The area to sown in oats is expected to drop this season. Growers expect to plant 48% less area to feed oats this season and 9% less to milling oats. Growers have struggled to sell oats this year, so it isn’t much of a surprise that they are pulling area back for the coming harvest. All of the feed oats area had been sown by October 10, while 18% of the area indicated for milling oats was yet to be sown.
Unsold stocks of all six cereal crops have reduced by 53% between the July and October surveys. Total grain stored on farm (including both sold and unsold grain) is up 3% on the same time last year.
There was next no malting barley left unsold at October 10 – just 0.7% of what was harvested in 2017 – but malting barley is generally sold under pre-harvest contract. Any that wasn’t sold under contract has been sold on the spot market, or sold for feed. There was 8% of the milling wheat harvest unsold at October 10.
There is 16% of the feed barley crop remaining unsold and 7% of the feed wheat crop. There is little concern about the volume of unsold barley. There seems to be just a few big loads left and otherwise this volume is small volumes spread across a greater number of growers. The unsold volume has still dropped a lot since July. In addition feed wheat has been a little cheaper than feed barley, so it has likely been selling more easily.
For oats, 8% of milling grade was unsold at October 10 and 16% of feed grade remained unsold.
Most of the wheat and barley that has been sold has been delivered, though there is still quite a bit remaining on farm. For wheat, 31% of the total that has been sold of each milling grade and feed grade wheat remained on farm at October 10. Nineteen percent of the volume sold of malting barley remains on farm and 27% of the volume sold of feed barley. For oats, nearly all of the milling quality oats remained on farm at October 10 – 78% of the volume that has been sold. And there was still 43% of the volume sold of feed oats on farm.
