Like it or not, rainfall has been the order of the day for many parts of the country, with winter crops still to harvest.
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Various locations through southern NSW, Victoria and South Australia have received up to 200 millimetres in the last couple of weeks.
For those in the summer cropping regions where harvest was all but complete, the rainfall has been well received as the medium-term weather forecast remains average at best.
While not as plentiful as 2022, subsoil moisture levels through NSW are above average in a lot of areas, which is positive for summer crop prospects.
The quality of the harvested grain post these rain events has been variable depending on location and crop maturity.
For a lot of NSW, where there were still reasonable volumes to be harvested, the wheat quality has held up reasonably well.
There is no doubt some shine was taken off the top of the crop.
However, there was not an extensive downgrade of quality, with a lot of the tonnes still making Australian standard white or better.
Understandably, there has been the introduction of weather-damaged grades at some sites, but these have seen relatively small volumes.
With the bulk of the barley completed, the impact on quality from malt to feed has equally not had a significant impact on the total malt selection through NSW or Victoria.
Overseas markets have seen plenty of activity of late, with numerous fundamental inputs dominating the newswires, both supply and demand-driven.
Certainly, China's buying of US wheat had the futures market pushing strongly in recent weeks, however, this did not translate into similar gains in local markets.
Rainfall in parts of Europe and South America equally impacted oilseed markets. This has been providing some opportunities locally in an uninspiring canola market.
The Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics released their summer crop forecast last week, and despite being significantly down on the previous year, it is certainly looking better than it was in previous months.
According to them, sorghum production is expected to be down by around 45 per cent to a total of 1.5 milion tonnes, which is a factor of both area and yield.
If realised, 1.5 million tonnes of production will still be below the five and 10-year average for that commodity. In relative terms, it appears as though NSW is going to see the largest decline in planted area and, subsequently, production.
In contrast, however, thanks to the recent rainfall, ABAREs is calling the 2023/24 cotton crop at 4.1 million bales of production, which puts it above the 10-year average.
While this number is still significantly down on the previous two years' production of 5.6 and 5.5 million bales, respectively, 4.1 million is still a reasonable size crop with some industry sources already quoting it quite a bit higher.
