The 2021/2022 cereal campaign goes on with positive signs in terms of prices, up compared to the start of the last campaign, both for soft wheat (+ 18%) and barley (+ 25%). This is what the calculations of the Italian Telematic Commodity Exchange (Bmti) reveal on the wholesale prices of the Chambers of Commerce and national Commodity Exchanges. The increase in demand from farms oriented on soft wheat rather than corn, which has increased by 48% compared to 2020, with prices around € 260 / t, is contributing, in part, to supporting the prices of soft wheat. For the barley harvest there is a very variable situation for yields, with good results in the North and some difficulties, however, in Lazio and Umbria. In general, the quality is good. According to Consorzi Agrari d’Italia (Cai), the first organized production reality with almost 3.5 million quintals of cereals managed and stored, however, the overall production is down by 10% compared to last year.
For CAI, however, while threshing begins to come to an end with some areas, such as Puglia and almost all of Emilia Romagna, which have already closed the harvest, the cereals harvested everywhere present very few impurities and higher-than-average proteins. The yields per hectare, says Cai, are down compared to last year in Puglia (-30%), in the Marche, Abruzzo and Molise (-20%), in Tuscany (from -30% to -50%) , in Lazio (-50%). The only exception is Emilia Romagna which marks + 20% with a production of 75-90 quintals per hectare. Thanks to supply chain agreements and cultivation contracts stipulated with some of the main players in the market, the shareholders and contributors of the CAI structures managed to obtain an additional remuneration with peaks of 20 euros per ton. For Gianluca Lelli, CEO of Cai “the way to go is to invest in quality to enhance the Made in Italy and the work of thousands of farms through the construction of fruitful synergies with the industrial world“.