Wheat: They Like To See It On The Ticket

Posted by Nogger - a legend in his own mind at 12:06 | Categorized as

16/05/11 -- I wish I had a pound for every time I've heard that one from a compounder over the last six months or so. The proof of the pudding as they say is in the eating, and sure enough Defra's latest numbers on compound feed manufacture seem to back it up.

The UK (excluding Northern Ireland) produced 7.5 MMT of compound feed from July 2010 to March 2011, up 5.6% on the previous season, and wheat was the major component of that feed at 2.1 MMT, little different from the 2.2 MMT utilised during 2009/10 despite it doubling in price.

It's probably true however that a fair amount of the wheat included into feed rations during this period was bought at, and priced in at, substantially lower levels than the prevailing market price at the time.

Now we are into summer-time however (supposedly, MrsN#3 wanted the heating on yesterday, she must think I'm made of money - no sorry I'm getting her mixed up with #1 and #2) it is also probably true that compound feed prices will have to more accurately reflect the cost of the individual components more closely. It will be interesting to see if wheat manages to hold onto it's 28% share of the ration when it's priced in at over GBP200/tonne.