Australia: Prices ease despite patchy rain

Rain across much of the northern region put the brakes on harvest this week, and has slowed grain movements to a crawl.

It has left some consumers short for their near-term needs, and paying up accordingly, but clearing weather is allowing deliveries to be made from November 21.

In the southern market, harvest is nearing full pace, although harvest bans related to hot weather, as well as rain, have slowed or stopped activity on some farms.

In the north, growers remain focussed on out-turning chickpeas, while in the south, canola and lentils are the priority for cash sales.

Table 1: Indicative prices in Australian dollars per tonne.

Light to very heavy rain over much of the northern region has slowed or stopped harvest in southern Queensland and northern New South Wales.

In the week to 9am today, Qld registrations include: Dalby 82mm; Jondaryan 48mm; Macalister 126mm, and Roma 81mm.

In northern NSW, registrations include: Coonamble 18mm; Dubbo 45mm; Moree 48mm; Mungindi 16mm, and Narrabri 57mm.

On some farms where rain did not fall, high humidity slowed or stopped harvest, and logistics headaches came from minor flooding of roads, plus a 12-hour closure on Tuesday of all lanes of the Warrego Highway west of Brisbane due to an accident involving a cattle truck.

Apart from the eastern Darling Downs, most Qld regions have finished harvest, and the rain is ideal for sorghum crops, the earliest of which will be harvested late next month.

Volume consumers are buying largely from the trade, with growers generally focused on pricing and delivering their chickpeas, which are being loaded on to a record four boats at once moored in Brisbane this week.

With rain interruptions, and the grower and transport-industry focus on chickpeas, one consumer said he had received only one quarter of the grain he had booked to come in in the past week.

Wheat is at the top of consumers’ shopping lists, with barley orders generally filled when it was harvested ahead of chickpeas.

“Wheat’s buying the lion’s share in the ration,” the consumer said.

“It’s the trade that’s carrying all the shorts.”

Delta Grain Marketing general manager Mick Parry said harvest was drawing to a close for growers west of the Newell Highway in northern NSW, and even the Warren and Trangie regions in north-central NSW were around 75pc done.

“Some clients had 10-15 headers going; there’s a lot of on-farm storage…so many people can store 80-100 percent of their crop,” Mr Parry said.

Feedlots are chipping away on their coverage of new-crop cottonseed, expected to become available once ginning gets going at pace in April.

Recent rain has been ideal for cotton as well as sorghum, and the new-crop cottonseed market is at least $50/t below the prompt market, currently at around $450/t delivered Downs.

Strong pricing and export sales of canola and solid demand for lentils has growers from central NSW to western Victoria putting marketing of wheat and barley on the backburner.

Mr Parry said the NSW harvest was marching south and east quickly, and crossing the line between a bumper and a challenged season.

“South of Forbes, yields are really dropping away; north of Forbes, it’s as good a season as people can remember.”

Wheat appears to have held up better than expected to the heavy frosts of September, although a number of sites in southern NSW are taking in GP1 and AUH2 wheat to allow screenings of up to 10pc, as opposed to 5pc for sound grades.

“The frost damage to cereals was less than some folk thought; we’re seeing more yield loss from the dry September.

“The cereal yields in the south have been a little bit better than we expected.”

Some growers have jagged excellent results of up to 7t/ha or more for cereals, but plenty have recorded a well below-average 2-3t/ha.

Watson Bulk Logistics managing director Joel Watson said many growers in Victoria’s Mallee region were warehousing wheat and barley.

“At this stage, growers are off cereals and on to their pulse crops,” Mr Watson said.

“Harvest of barley in the Mallee is near the end, and wheat’s firing up.

“A lot of growers are running into trouble with green grain in frosted crops that reshot after rain.

“There are a fair few growers tossing up whether they wait for that green grain to mature, or whether they take the downgrade.”

Vic’s harvest has been interrupted in the past week by harvest bans and some fires in the Wimmera tied to hot weather, and then rain.

Tags: rain, harvest, barley, canola, weather, wheat, chickpeas, yields, demand, sorghum