Harvest in France continues to be held up by wet weather, sparking further concerns about grain quality.

More than half of the French harvest was still to be gathered, and it was unlikely that combines would make much progress before the second half of this week (w/c 25 July), said a report by analyst Agritel.

“Adverse weather also affects Germany, Poland, and most of Northern Europe. But weather improvement seems likely for the middle of the week.”

With old crop stocks tight, harvest premiums, particularly for quality wheat in France, were rising, it said.

Rainfall continued to hamper harvest in parts of Ukraine, but farmers were reporting good winter barley yields of 3-4t/ha (1.2-1.6t/acre).

“In Kazakhstan, official figures on 22 July show that in the South of the country 227,000ha of grain had been harvested with an average yield of 1.47t/ha (0.6t/acre), the highest level compared to historical average in this country.”

In Russia, the export campaign was off to a storming start, with 1.3m tonnes of grain exported from sea ports from 1-22 July, against 495,700t over the same period last year.

But on the other side of the Atlantic, farmers remained concerned about the effect of hot weather on the American corn crop.

“Despite storms observed this weekend, corn crops are still at stake from above-normal temperatures forecast for the next two weeks on the Corn Belt,” said Agritel.

“Prices thus remain highly volatile depending on the weather market.”