Grain Market Update

By Chris Johnson
3^rd February, 2025

As we roll into the first week of February, it feels to me if you blinked, you might have missed January altogether. With school holidays over and all but the lucky few getting the extra heat week, we are seeing more growers switching on the to explore pricing options for the balance of last year’s crop. 

Weather continues to be mixed across the east coast, with floods in far north Queensland, fires in Victoria and unstable conditions in between. With headers harvesting sorghum across northern NSW and Southern Queensland, the hot and humid conditions mean afternoon storms continue to be a factor. These storms are helping build the moisture profile for this year’s upcoming winter crop sowing. 

Futures markets had been trying to come to terms with the possibility that President Trump would make good on his import tariff promises for Mexico, Canada and China, which he did over the weekend. While Canada and Mexico reciprocated by adding tariffs on US imports, how this plays out over the coming days and weeks will be interesting to watch, given the large amounts of grain that transacts over the American borders with its neighbours. 

Domestic prices for wheat and barley have remained mostly unchanged across most of the end user consumers across the Darling Downs and Northern NSW markets. Finding a prompt market to deliver against is becoming increasingly harder as growers try to make room for their sorghum crops. Feedlots continue to pick off the over the fence tonnes, as they have since harvest time, relying on the trade to cover the deferred deliveries they will need in the second half of the year. It would seem that the grower is happy to hold their track stock in the bulk handling storage for now, given they still have another 5 months of free storage while prices continue to trade mostly sideways.

As more sorghum is harvested, the grower has been engaging the market at current values around $350 delivered Brisbane and Newcastle port equivalent prices. With export capacity well booked already with wheat and some later chickpeas in Queensland, finding room to fit sorghum into export terminals is somewhat of a juggle. There is limited demand into the packer destinations on the Downs and that is being filled with off the header sales and it may be that access to is a factor.

Canola continues to ride the price roller coaster, down week on week but somewhere in the middle of its most recent rally. Locally we see the grower sold at record levels for canola in Australia for this time of the year with only limited tonnes held in the grower’s hand. The overall oilseed market remains well supplied, even with mixed conditions across Argentina’s soybean crop, and another near record Brazilian crop will no doubt fill that gap. Changes to US biofuel tax credits, and Trumps tariffs means we will likely continue to see volatility in this market.