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Good yields and quality are being seen across the country with the wheat harvest now in full swing. David Jones and Adam Clarke report
Tumbling grain prices are putting a darkening cloud over a better than expected harvest with winter barley largely cut and wheat showing high-quality grain.
Feed wheat prices have slipped nearly £50/t and rapeseed about £ 100/t over the past four months helping to deflate the reaction to a promising harvest.
Although Britain faces the lowest wheat and rapeseed harvest in about a decade, bumper crops almost everywhere else in the world have depressed prices.
With the majority of winter barley already cut, along with a good slice of oilseed rape and about 5% of winter wheat, prices have declined as growers sell into a falling market.
"What we are seeing is wheat yields better than expected and the quality is good, and nothing like the poor quality of last year," says Jonathan Lane, trading manager at Gleadell. Traders expect a wheat crop of about 12-12.5m tonnes which is the lowest since 200l's 11.6m tonne crop, but still better than envisaged a few months ago.
With the national wheat area down 19% to 1.61m ha, the harvest was unlikely to...