DESPITE an abundance of feed grain in eastern Australia and international markets awash with low-quality grain from the Black Sea region, Victorian growers are proving to be proud owners of grain.
The first six months of deregulated export wheat marketing has attracted many buyers.
They have been offering growers a broad range of cash and pool-selling tools for their grain.
Growers have tended to sell their high-quality grain and are retaining their lower quality feed grains in on-farm storage.
Traders are now reporting that grain farmers in the US are also proving to be tough sellers. Like their Australian counterparts, growers have been storing grain and are holding out for higher prices.
The last fortnight has seen a steady stream of wheat buyers coming to the market. These international grain importers have low stocks and have been delaying their purchases as long as possible in the hope prices will fall.
Traders say anomalies in the US futures markets have caused US grain to be inflated to world values.
US traders are on the sidelines watching their competitors sell wheat to Egypt and China.
They appear to have little hope of selling to the other buyers in the present market including Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Bangladesh, Morocco and Syria.
Improving demand, high US futures prices and the lack of grower selling have all contributed to higher wheat pool prices in Australia.
Our tables show Graincorp has lifted the estimated returns for its wheat pool last week by more than $15 a tonne for the benchmark APW wheat.
Prices have been falling as supply fills demand for Victorian malt barley.
ABB's malting barley pool monitored in our table has closed and a new pool is expected to open.
Future directions for the feed-grain market are being influenced by moisture stress in soybean and corn crops in part of Argentina.
The US winter wheat crop is expected to be down marginally on last year's production and has a favourable cover of snow at present.
A lowering of feed barley subsidies late last year has lowered the international market for the crop. These subsidies were put in place by the Saudi Government to cushion its farmers from the high international price of feed-barley.
With feed-barley prices now much lower, the subsidy has been lowered.
Some unusual rain in Saudi Arabia late last year reduced the import demand for feed barley.
Saudi Arabia is one of the world's largest importers of feed barley.
