After getting off to a flying start earlier in August, progress with this year’s harvest has slowed over the last couple of weeks, leaving a frustrating proportion of crop still out in the field.

Although all winter barley and the majority of the OSR crop is now safely in the shed, around 30% of the winter wheat is still left to be cut and quality is just beginning to deteriorate.

Generally speaking, feed wheat samples have tested very well and although bushel weights are nothing particularly special, the majority are testing comfortably above the required 72kg/hl.

Wheat yields have been excellent with the majority of crops yielding somewhere in the region of 3.5-4 Tonnes/Acre in both first and second wheat situations. For milling varieties, quality issues are common and the good yields appear to have diluted the protein content in many samples.

Hagberg Falling numbers have however been excellent and although we are beginning to see numbers slip following the recent wet weather, most should be acceptable across a variety of quality specifications.

Quality issues are also prominent across much of wider Europe and although yields have also been very good (we could be looking at a total European wheat crop of over 150M/T), the proportion of wheat at feed grade is much larger than initially anticipated. The French soft wheat crop is believed to be particularly affected due to a ‘prolonged period of wet weather’.

Consequently, UK milling premiums have vastly increased throughout the course of the last month - full specification group 1 varieties are currently valued at a £40+ premium to feed wheat.

The longevity of this will however depend on the quality of the German milling wheat crop; a large, good quality exportable surplus could add pressure to our local values.