Miller Magazine Issue: 144 December 2021

93 MARKET ANALYSIS MILLER / december 2021 If you think that the current season will be similar to the previous one just be- cause the price of grain continues to rise, I will disappoint you: you are wrong. But everything that happens is very sim- ilar to 2008 when macroeconomics af- fected all industries quickly and in de- tail. But let's start in order. We entered the beginning of the 20/21 season with the idea of a thaw in China-US relations and a wave of ten- sions between China and Australia. Optimism about the state of crops in the Northern Hemisphere melted before our eyes as the harvest approached, and the bulls found support in everything from quarantine to a drop in produc- tion. As early as late May 2020, wheat futures bounced off an eight-month low as concerns over the health of the European Union's harvest exacerbated the impact of wors- ening conditions in the Black Sea region. Rains were re- quired in many regions to stem the decline in production. Over a large area of the country and Central Europe, spring precipitation is insufficient to replenish the soil lev- el. Daytime temperatures were also above average. Crop development slowed down significantly, and their condi- tion was worse than in 2019. The forecast for relatively dri- er than average conditions in many parts of France, Ger- many and Poland - some of the main EU wheat producers - was stressful. A similar situation with a lack of rain was observed in Romania and Bulgaria. The Hunger Games Elena Faige Neroba Business Development Manager Maxigrain