MarketsFarm — With good supplies available, don’t expect to see much movement in prices for feed wheat and barley over the next several months, according to Nelson Neumann.
Neumann, senior trader for Agfinity at Stony Plain, Alta., said barley currently was around $223 per tonne Lethbridge delivered and wheat was a little back at $220 per tonne. He noted prices had increased recently, but since came down.
“We had a discussion in our office and we felt the question wasn’t why did it come down, but moreso, why was it propped up in the first place?” he said.
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Neumann chalked that up to transportation, with a trucking shortage and the strike at Canadian National Railway. That resulted in buyers making purchases for a short time.
Since “the market corrected to its equilibrium,” he said, “buyers are pretty much covered for December.”
Also, supplies will be ample through winter and well into spring, Neumann said. The difficult Prairie harvest resulted in large amounts of wheat and barley being sold for feed this fall. Crops will be left to overwinter and will become available in the spring. That would normally be a time when feed grains would otherwise be in short supply.
“Most sales are going to have to be in 2020,” Neumann said.
— Glen Hallick reports for MarketsFarm, a Glacier FarmMedia division specializing in grain and commodity market analysis and reporting.
