Grain price analysis for 2022 vs. the average of the last 5 years in Black Sea Area

The fact that the last agricultural season was totally out of the ordinary, at least in the Black Sea area, is clear. But what is the ordinary we relate to? We know that grain prices usually have a certain seasonality, and this can be seen also when we look at the average price over several years.

So we have prepared some graphs for prices of Wheat, Rapeseed and Corn in which we compare the price evolution from 2022 with the average price evolution from the previous 5 years (period 2017 - 2021). For prices, we have chosen the price source either the prices in the Romanian Black Sea port of Constanta, or the prices from Euronext commodity exchange.

1. Milling wheat

Thus, we start with milling wheat, analyzing CPT Constanța quotations (so delivered to Constanța) over the time periods mentioned above.

The graph shows the monthly average of the price in different seasons (on the horizontal axis we have the months of the year).

We can quickly notice a few aspects:

- in 2022, we have a price growth curve in the months in the middle of the year, close to the harvest period, while in the average of the last 5 years the curve is the opposite (lower prices at harvest).

- we see in 2022 a big jump of the price in March, following the start of the war in Ukraine on February 24, 2022.

- obviously, big differences in the amount per month, we know that prices have increased a lot in 2022 (both for grain and for inputs).

The first aspect, however, seems the most interesting, because it affects some classic paradigms related to the optimal period of sale and the profitability of grain storage.

2. Rapeseed.

For rapeseed, we looked at the prices from the Parisian stock exchange EURONEXT (MATIF), because it is the most important benchmark for this product in Europe: