Plan ahead to maximise crop prices

WITH increasingly optimistic forecasts on world cereal production in 2013 and a consequential slippage in futures prices, a leading grain trader has suggested producers should look at selling forward if they see any uplift in trade.

David Sheppard from Gleadell said the current market outlook for wheat suggested that growers should seize on any rally as an opportunity to sell a percentage of their crop.

“The global picture continues to have a bearish undertone,” he said. “The US has mostly planted its corn and the weather is moving from being wet to being warm, creating greenhouse conditions across large parts 
of the main US growing regions.

“Unless we see a return to severe heat and drought, the market should remain on the defensive.”

He said there was now a general acceptance within the trade that UK crops had improved significantly in recent weeks and some trade bodies were now putting their crop estimates as high as 12 million tonnes.

“The big swing factors for the UK market will be the quality of the crop we eventually get and how much demand we see from the ethanol sector.”