Fabas 2026/27: Lithuania Planted a Record. We're Cutting from $550 to ~$500

We are cutting our 2026/27 harvest guide to ~$500/mt delivered Melbourne and Geelong port zone, from mid-$500's, on Lithuanian crop area data released after our last report.

Lithuania is Egypt's second largest supplier of faba beans after Australia, and the least transparent supplier in the market. No stocks series. Area data that reaches the English-speaking trade weeks late, if it gets there at all. Shipments to Egypt that have swung between 28,334mt and 144,043mt inside nine years, on yields that move better than two to one between its worst season and its best. No supplier into Egypt is harder to forecast, and we have just found out why.

We have spent the past week pulling its balance apart from the primary data up: Eurostat's area release of 28 August, its export book destination by destination, and nine years of Comtrade shipment records.

Two things came out of it, and we have not seen either reported anywhere in the English-language trade. Lithuania has sown a record area. And it is possibly sitting on a carryover of up to 140kmt that nobody has counted.

Both change the European picture we set out on 16 August, so we are moving our guide.

The record area, and where we found it

Eurostat released Lithuania's 2026 crop area on 28 August, twelve days after our last report. It shows 112,690 ha of beans, an all-time record, 25% above the previous high and 58% above the 2018 to 2025 average. The only earlier reference we can trace is a Lithuanian-language newswire item on 28 July.

No English-language trade source that we could find carried it.

Put Lithuania's own official yield forecast across that area. LAMMC has held 2.6 mt/ha since 20 July and did not move it at its 20 August revision. On 112,690 ha that is a crop of 293kmt. Strip out domestic seed and feed use and the other export markets Lithuania supplies every year, and about 173kmt of it is possibly exportable to Egypt. 

Egypt took 92kmt from Lithuania in 2024, and our August exposure model took 20 to 40% off that number. That was the error. A crop cut only reaches Egypt if Lithuania runs short of exportable beans, and on its own official yield forecast it does not.

The floor says the same thing. Using the worst yield in the eleven-year record, 1.79mt/ha in 2021, the crop still calculates as 201,700mt and about 82kmt of that is exportable to Egypt, still roughly what Egypt took last year.

Based on the updated crop area - there is no yield in Lithuania's recorded history that produces the shortfall we modelled in August.

Both of those exportable figures are our own calculation, not published numbers. Lithuania publishes no balance sheet and no stocks series. We have built them from the Eurostat area release, the LAMMC yield forecast, the eleven-year yield record and Comtrade shipment data destination by destination. The area, the yield forecast and the shipments are measured or published. Everything we net off them is derived.

We got it wrong, on incomplete information. 

Our August exposure estimate was set against a smaller area than Lithuania had actually planted. The Eurostat figure did not exist when we published, and the only earlier mention of it anywhere was in Lithuanian. That explains it. It does not excuse it, and the correction stands either way.

The weather reporting still stands. LRT on 13 July and the European Commission's Joint Research Centre on 27 July both described damage at flowering and a wet, cool finish, and the 2.6 mt/ha forecast already carries that damage. What has changed is the area it is set against.

The Lithuanian surplus nobody has counted

We have since built Lithuania's export book destination by destination, rather than looking only at what it sends Egypt. That is what surfaced the surplus. Latvia, Denmark, Norway and the Netherlands take 50-80kmt a year between them, and those channels have proved stable rather than elastic. Netting them off, alongside domestic seed and feed use, leaves a residual that does not go anywhere.

Domestic uptake is small and stable. Lithuania retains around 55kmt a year, roughly 18kmt of that as seed and the balance into domestic feed, food and loss. On this year's record area the seed component alone rises toward 28kmt, and that is the only part of domestic use that moves.

Lithuania's balance does not close. It grew 234,080mt and exported 141,904mt in 2024, then grew 255,600mt and exported 99,925mt in 2025. After domestic use, a possible 140kmt is unaccounted for across the two years, most of it built last season. No stocks series is published, so that figure is derived rather than measured.

That tonnage can be discounted into Egypt, and a bit of discolouration will not stop it. Beans that miss the whole-bean grade are split or milled, and both sit inside the same demand. It displaces tonnage Australia would otherwise supply, in our own shipping window.

Australia's issue is geographic, not a shortage

ABARES cut the national crop to 858,700mt on 1 September, 1.8% below its June forecast. The national number barely moved. The state numbers moved a great deal. New South Wales is down to 285kmt from 430kmt last season and Queensland to 17kmt from 28kmt, while Victoria at 292,600mt and South Australia at 220,100mt are both within 3% of last year. Victoria now out-produces New South Wales.

The south has absorbed the northern loss almost exactly.

The tonnage is there. It is in the wrong place for the first export slots of the season. Our Oct/Nov programme out of Brisbane and Newcastle draws on the crop that fell, and the crop that held does not come off until Dec/Jan.

Egypt is still clearing its own surplus

Egypt's quiet import year was not lost demand. It was a full shed. That surplus has been drawing down through 2026, and Ramadan begins on or about 8 February 2027, which pulls arrivals into a November to January window.

The demand is coming. It is not arriving early enough to drive Australian prices at harvest.

Our revised guide

We now guide ~$500/mt delivered Melbourne and Geelong port zone for new crop 2026/27 into the harvest window, revised from mid-$500's/mt.

We hold it with genuinely two-way risk, and we would rather say so than pretend to a confidence we do not have.

Pulling higher: October and November shipments come out of a northern crop that is short, and the south is not off the header in time to substitute. Where a December programme out of the south has to be covered against a fixed sailing date, expect brief excursions above the guide. Egypt's surplus clearing into the Ramadan window pulls the same way, and a softer Australian dollar would do the work without Egypt paying a cent more.

Pulling lower: a discounted Lithuanian surplus landing in Egypt through the same window, a Baltic programme at the top of its range, or Lithuanian yields confirming at or above the official 2.6mt/ha.

What would move the price guide

Upside:

●      The Australian dollar toward 0.65

●      A December programme covered out of the south

●      Egypt returning as its carry-in clears

Downside:

●      A Baltic programme into Egypt above 200kmt

●      Lithuanian yields confirmed at or above 2.6mt/ha

●      Lithuanian carryover discounted into Egypt

We are publishing this before the Lithuanian harvest result is known, before Egypt has committed, and before new crop has a port bid at all. Old crop sits around $430/mt delivered port zones. There is nothing yet for this call to be behind, and a revision is only worth something if it arrives in time to be useful.

We cannot verify the Lithuanian yield or grade. Its official forecaster reports again around 20 September and we will revise when it lands.

This report is general information only. It does not take account of your objectives, financial situation or needs, and it is not a recommendation to buy or sell. Prices are as at 3 September 2026.

Sources: Eurostat crop statistics (28 Aug 2026) and COMEXT. UN Comtrade exporter declarations, HS 071350. ABARES Australian Crop Report, September 2026. LAMMC yield forecasts. LRT (13 Jul 2026). JRC MARS bulletin (27 Jul 2026). GrainSource price board and trade records.