Farmers' Price Complaint Falls Flat

A long-held complaint among grain farmers is that buyers are slow to pass on price rises but quick to cut prices when they fall. To test this theory, a financial analyst examined almost 11 years of wheat price data from September 2015 to August 2026, comparing CBOT wheat futures with physical wheat prices at seven Australian ports.

The analysis found that while Port Kembla was the clearest example where falls tended to reach the market faster than rallies, there was no consistent evidence across all ports that buyers were systematically quicker to cut prices than raise them. In fact, in some cases, the upside response was larger.

When looking at strong multiday runs and major weekly movements, the data showed that Australian wheat prices passed through slightly more of the international move after strong upward runs than they did after strong downward runs.