EU Wheat Ends Flat To Lower

EU wheat futures closed flat to slightly lower Tuesday with May Paris milling wheat ending unchanged at EUR136.00/tonne and May London feed wheat closing down GBP1.00 at GBP107.00/tonne.

There is once again very little fresh news in the market, old crop stocks are seemingly plentiful and little winter damage seems to have occurred across most of Europe.

Still, farmers remain reluctant sellers at current levels, although end users believe that farmers will be forced to come to market at some point before new-crop arrives in July/August, due to lack of storage.

Farmers meanwhile believe that increased demand, and lower production levels in 2009/10, will mean that consumers will have to cough up if they want wheat.

I'd rather side with the farmers on this one. Judged on my early season observations in the north of the country wheat crops look very "patchy" so far. In addition I don't subscribe to the belief that old-crop carryover will be as large as official projections say.