Australia: Queensland, New South Wales rain softens cereal markets

Patchy rain for New South Wales and Queensland in the past week, with more on the forecast to fill in the gaps, has softened bids for wheat and barley.

Bucking the trend is the Queensland sorghum market, where China-facing export demand has added $5 per tonne to values.

Conditions remain critically dry in South Australia and western Victoria, where growers are nonetheless starting their seeding campaigns on the expectation of a break in April or May to germinate crops.

Table 1: Indicative prices in Australian dollars per tonne.

Qld and northern NSW growers have slowed their selling of new-crop sorghum, and bids have lifted to attract tonnage needed to fill cargoes booked for coming weeks.

With the sorghum market stronger and wheat cheaper, poultry buyers are returning to wheat as the base grain for rations.

“Growers aren’t getting rid of sorghum at these prices, and I can’t understand why,” one trader said.

Barley is also seen as good buying, and lotfeeders are chipping away at coverage for the coming quarter.

Widespread rain is currently falling over most of Qld’s growing areas, and those in the northern half of NSW too, and falls of more than 50mm are forecast for coming days.

While far from ideal for growers in the midst of picking cotton, the rain will get growers off to a flying start on their early winter crops, namely canola, long-season wheat, and faba beans.

Values in the southern market have eased in the past week on general rain forecast for NSW, which will be ideal for dry-sown paddocks, and dual-purpose or grazing crops already in the ground.

Forecasts point to growing areas in the southern half of NSW getting 15-50mm in coming days.

Consumers are seen as well covered, with grain from NSW feeding into mills in SA, and export demand for cereals is moderate.

“It’s a bit all over the shop,” Peters Commodities Riverina-based trader Peter Gerhardy said.

“Growers are not in a real rush to sell.”

Forecasts point to 10-15mm of rain for the north-eastern corner of Vic’s grainbelt, and growers there and in southern NSW are buying inputs now for planting.

“There’s rain on the forecast for the weekend, and there’s a lot of fertiliser exeuction taking place now.

“Once the grower starts to see those fuel, chemical, and fertiliser bills, they might cash a bit of grain in.”

Mr Gerhardy said that was likely to be lower-protein wheat stored on farm.

Graziers in south-west NSW, Vic, and SA are continuing to buy barley, lupins, and pellets to feed sheep in containment pens.

In SA, AW Vater & Sons principal trader Kim Vater said pellets where the preferred feed for sheep.

Only very light rain is forecast for SA in the coming week, and Mr Vater said growers will soon make a start on dry-sowing faba beans, and many are buying fertiliser ahead of the new-crop lant.

He said grower stocks of unsold grain were limited after the low-yielding year, which had many growers sell most of what they harvested straight off the header.

Tags: Australia, China, barley, wheat, Market, sorghum, rain