As the Spring of 2026 dawns, a question that is being asked is, after the difficulties of the 2025 season, can we expect a straightforward season of cropping and markets?
I think you can guess the answer to this already – absolutely not.
As I sit writing this report, the US and Israel have just launched missile strikes on Iranian targets, which appear to have killed Iran’s Supreme Leader. This action will create significant disruption in the area, and we have already seen retaliatory strikes from Iran on US and Israeli targets.
While it is unlikely that the markets will respond on the scale that we saw when Russia attacked Ukraine, there could be repercussions that will come to light over the next few weeks.
As ever, both local and global weather patterns will play a significant part in the development of crops and markets. Much of the UK, and several areas in western Europe, are seeing the effects of a very wet winter. Currently, this doesn’t appear to have hindered established winter crops, which is encouraging. There have been reports from the US of drought issues and winter kill concerns affecting their crops, but it is too early to determine the extent of any market disruption that this could cause. Recent harvests in the southern hemisphere have reported yields and quality as OK to good, which is unlikely to trigger any major price changes.
In the UK, this will be the first year of trading since the decrease in demand from the distilling and brewing markets for malting barley and distilling wheat. With significantly less barley being required by the malting industry, this will lead to a big shake-up as we enter the 2026 harvest. This could lead to a larger tonnage of feeding barley looking for a home. With the closure of malting and mothballing of distilleries being reported, it looks like this could be a medium to long-term issue, which will affect this season's markets.
Crop conditions
Wheat
With almost all winter wheat crops being sown early and into good seed beds, most crops are looking well established and able to cope with the winter months' excessive rainfall. The recent drier conditions have allowed many farmers to venture onto their crops and apply an initial application of fertiliser.
Barley
Like winter wheat, winter-sown wheat crops look to be in good shape. With barley suffering more from sitting in wetter ground, there will be more damaging effects from the wet conditions, but the degree of this damage still needs to be established.
The ground conditions will delay the sowing of spring barley in all be the areas with the lightest and freely draining soils. The warmer temperatures that are forecast for the start of March will help the soil to dry a little quicker, so I would expect the large proportion of spring barley to be sown in March.
Markets
Wheat
Old crop - With global wheat and other cereal markets being comfortably supplied and backed with, reportedly, good storage tonnages, there appears to be little chance of any considerable upward momentum in the current season's wheat pricing. Unless, as mentioned earlier, the conflict kicking off in the Middle East has a part to play. May 26 wheat futures closed at the end of Feb at £169, slightly firmer than the recent lows of below £166.
New crop - The Nov 26 wheat futures are showing a slightly stronger base than the old crop, trading at £178, but still not at a level where growers would be expecting to sell their crops and leave much of a margin. The new crop values will be where most of the responses will show if political or weather issues develop with any significance.
Barley
Old crop – Much like with wheat, the barley market is well supplied and easily meeting demand. An example of Central Scotland feed barley pricing was being offered in the last week of February at £140 ex farm for April movement. This is a level just at or below the cost of production for the grower. This situation doesn’t look like it will improve before harvest.
New crop - It is a little early to assess entirely what the extra barley, as mentioned earlier, not being swallowed up by maltsters, will do to market prices, but the likelihood is high that values will only be similar or marginally better than those being offered for the old crop at present. So much will depend on how export demand develops this forthcoming season, and it is too early to foresee what this may be like. It is probably going to be nearer June/July before this picture becomes any clearer.