Most growers have taken advantage of an excellent week’s weather to lift the last of the potatoes and get more winter crops into the ground. We're into November and the weather is forecast to turn colder. However, autumn-sown fields are looking nice and green following temperatures of up to 14oC, which has seen some good growing days.

The market is also continuing to heat up – but more tepid, than 'roasting'. Wheat prices are again moving up and November, 2018, LIFFE feed wheat futures closed last week at £139.50, up £2.95 on the week. That means there's been a £24 or 20% rally over the past four months.

November, 2016, futures closed at £139 which was up £5 and November, 2017, was up £3 to £137.90, or the highest level seen since June, 2014.

The price rises have not been because of any material change to world supply and demand or end stocks but started with the Brexit result last June and has continued to rise. Weather, as always, does have a part to play but again there has been no serious issues that would cause prices to do what they have done.

Currency has been the major factor and sterling has devalued by almost 7% against the euro in recent months and lost more than 1% in the past week.

Bread milling wheat ex farm has risen by £2.70 to £137.70, feed wheat is up 90p to £130.40 and feed barley is up £1 to £109.50.

Large agricultural fund investors have been active as well over the past two months, with investors attracted by historically low global dollar-based commodity prices and the risk of inflation and the growing concern in the US that there might be a rise in interest rates before the end of this year. This has driven speculators to look for other opportunities, including buying into agricultural commodities.

Added to that, Egypt has again become active in its wheat buying programme having abandoned their zero tolerance policy on cargo contamination with ergot, which saw other countries refuse to sell wheat to Egypt until they returned to the original contamination level of up to 0.05% – the same as other importing nations.

Egypt bought 420,000 tonnes of wheat from Russia and Romania. That was its biggest order since 535,000 tonnes were bought in January, 2014, and to date have bought 2.04m tonnes since July.

This recent tender has also been linked with higher freight rates up to $10.30 per tonne for shipping Russian wheat to Egypt, which is the most that has been paid in little over a year and, earlier this year, freight rates from Russia fell as low as $5 per tonne.

The UK is currently not export competitive even though recent factors earlier mentioned have lifted prices and with the rise in prices. Future crop premiums have eroded and the next two crop years are trading at almost the same price levels.

UK barley remains uncompetitive on the export market, too, despite weak sterling and normally a lot of UK barley goes to Spain. But they had a big domestic barley crop and will be exporting rather than importing barley this year.

There seems to be little domestic demand for malting barley either, as maltsters have sufficient supplies at present to see them into 2017.

EU soft wheat exports stand at 7.7m tonnes, compared to 6.8m tonnes at this time last year and barley exports of 1.3m tonnes are way down from the 4.2m tonnes last year at this time. Maize imports are down from 2.9 to 2.5m tonnes.

The International Grain Council has forecast world grain stocks up by a further 7m tonnes to 498m tonnes for the end of the 2016-17 season which would be up by 23m tonnes year-on-year. The increased level of carry-over stocks represents continued world grain supply growth, faster than consumption growth, particularly amongst the world’s top exporters.

Due to increased production, world stocks-to-use ratio have increased from 24% to 24.3% and, with an increased level of stocks being held by major exporters, we may see more suppressed price levels later in the season. The volume of stocks held by China is believed to be as high as 40% and is up 4% on last year. This is a level not seen since the 1990s.

Record US maize production will leave the world market 12m tonnes in surplus in 2016-17 and global maize production is put at 1.035bn tonnes compared to 1.027bn tonnes which is an increase of 64m tonnes year-on-year and global maize stocks are forecast to be at a record 221m tonnes. This due to an 8% increase in the US harvested area and average yields are seen rising by 3% year-on-year and puts US maize production up by 11% on last year’s level, but consumption and exports combined have only increased by 6%.

UK delivered rapeseed prices made their sixth consecutive weekly gain last week and oilseed rape delivered Erith was up £4.50 to £361. US soyabean export demand last week was strong, driven by sales to China due to a weakening of Chinese currency. This has made imported soya increasingly expensive, encouraging them to secure supplies to cover against further price rises.

China is the world’s largest consumer of soya and demand is rising, up an average 8% or 6m tonnes per year between 2011/12 and 2015/16.

The Matif rapeseed futures in Paris broke above the €400/tonne level last week and hit an 18-month high as palm oil rose 3.5% to a two year high. However, rapeseed futures fell later in the week due to profit taking and has struggled to get back up to earlier higher levels.