Fabas: last season’s surplus set to repeat
Updated: 3 days ago
Last season, half the faba crop was exported, about a third was used at home, and the rest found no home at all. This season looks set to go the same way.
On 6 October we held our new-crop guide at $450-460/mt delivered Melbourne and Geelong, and said reaching it may depend on growers holding until Egyptian buyers lift their bids.
Since then we have looked at how much of last season’s crop actually found a home, and what that means for this harvest.
Our view: bids are increasingly likely to stay flat through this harvest than rise, as growers compete in another oversupplied sellers' market for the available homes. High shipping costs and cheap Baltic beans are not helping.
2025/26: half exported, a third used at home, the rest carried over
ABARES put the 2025/26 crop at 1.02Mmt. UN Comtrade has Australia exporting 508kmt of faba beans in the July to June season that followed, about half of it. The season before, exports of 621kmt matched 89% of a 695kmt crop.
Figure 1 explains this market more clearly than anything else in this report. Two seasons ago exports took more than the whole crop. Last season they took half, 113kmt less than the year before on a crop 47% larger. This season we forecast less than half of everything available.
Nobody knows how much went into domestic use. No figures are published and estimates in the trade vary widely. Lower prices drew more beans into stockfeed, and our high estimate puts domestic uptake, including seed, at about 350kmt.
Even at that level, the bumper crop left a large carry-over, about 160kmt on our high estimate and far more on lower ones. These are estimates only, ours included, and we work on about 200kmt.
Our forecast for this season
We forecast a 2026/27 crop of about 850kmt, slightly under the ABARES September figure of 859kmt. With about 200kmt carried in, that is roughly 1.05Mmt to find a home.
We forecast exports of about 480kmt, below last season’s 508kmt.
Depending on domestic use, between about 200kmt and our high estimate of 350kmt, that leaves roughly 220-370kmt with no home by mid-2027
The slow start to the season also supports this, with 27kmt shipped in July and August against 75 kmt a year earlier.
Old crop is still on offer, and bids are thin
Old crop (OC) beans are still on offer with few buyers. By 16 October the OC #2 bid of $430/mt delivered Melbourne west side had gone, and #2 was being offered at that level instead. The only #1 buying interest on broker sheets was $370/mt delivered Wimmera packers.
New-crop bids are a short list, mostly #2 in the low-$400's/mt delivered.
A small tonnage of OC traded at around $450/mt delivered Laverton, for packing into containers for export. That gives some hope, but it is likely short covering and does not reflect the wider market level. It does give growers a benchmark, and that can open a gap between where bulk bids actually are and what growers expect.
Faba beans do not store as well as other pulses.
They hold their colour well through the year after harvest and can still sell as #2s, but a two-year-old bean has one home, the feed market, at a discount. That is the risk for old-crop beans carried past this harvest.
A record Baltic crop leaves Egypt with cheaper options
ABARES has our 2026/27 crop at 859kmt, with New South Wales carrying the whole fall at 285kmt against 430kmt. We expect Egypt to take about the same from Australia as last season, a reduced year against the five-year average of about 420kmt.
A record Baltic crop gives Egyptian buyers a cheaper option than Australian beans this season.
Trade indications put Baltic beans into Egypt at up to US$100/mt under Australian, and Egyptian bids are well below what growers here are expecting.
Lithuanian trade sources tell us the bean harvest is finished, though no official figure confirms it yet. Both Lithuanian yield figures are estimates: the official LAMMC forecast closed at 2.7mt/ha, and the European Commission carries an undated 3.08mt/ha.
The higher figure suggests the crop may be bigger than LAMMC expected.
On the Commission's numbers Lithuania and Latvia grew a record of about 512kmt, against 368kmt last year.
Higher yields mean more bean of exportable quality. The same sources put the food-grade share at only around 40%, but that is 40% of a much larger crop. An Egyptian buyer told us lower-quality Baltic beans are so much cheaper than Australian that Egypt may buy more of them, cutting demand for ours.
Several things point to bids staying flat through harvest more than rising to $450/mt.
Egypt is covering nearby needs with Baltic beans now, so Australian exporters can fill early programmes at current levels. Exporters are watching each other to see who moves first for volume. Any exporter wanting to accumulate tonnage quickly would have to bid over the market. The others can match it, or sit out until that buyer is covered if their own overseas buyers are not paying enough to compete. Once the rush is over, bids settle back to the level overseas demand supports. Bulk vessels short of cover at the lower levels could lift bids, though likely only briefly.
Any quality premium is usually only paid at harvest and into the export job. Once that is filled, the remaining homes are domestic and pay on feed value.
Domestic demand cannot take the surplus
Opportunities narrowed as last season went on. Volume was generally bought on spreads, leaving small sales over a longer period, and the pockets of good pricing did not last for any volume. Feed buyers are working back to around $420-425/mt port equivalent on our estimate, and that is where the beans the export market leaves behind are likely to clear.
Domestic forward homes are filling up fast.
One leading domestic feed buyer in Victoria and South Australia is mostly covered for the rest of 2026, and in Victoria looks to have most of its needs covered until March. The few growers selling early are locking in these forward prices ahead of competing at harvest for uncertain pricing, and every forward contract booked now is one less home for those who wait.
Most growers are not engaging at current levels, especially this far out from harvest.
That is why so little volume is trading. Harvest breaks the standoff: once beans come off and need a home, the pool of sellers grows quickly into a market with fewer homes left.
The standoff can cut the other way for a time.
As we wrote on 22 September, growers holding back can squeeze supply, and exporters with forward sales to fill have had to lift bids to find the beans. We have seen it before, and it may lift the market slightly before harvest pressure builds.
Upcountry and the north look the better homes
Upcountry buyers may return more ex-farm than the export bid. Sheep feed and domestic feed mills sit closer to the beans, so less goes on freight.
For growers positioned to sell into it, in the Riverina or further north, we think the mid NSW is likely to carry more value this season. Northern feed should be priced $30-70/mt over southern markets. Although the north holds a large share of last season's carry-over, its far smaller crop this year should keep demand there steady, and with more dry weather forecast, buyers are buying beans as drought insurance.
A large pool of late sellers
Opinion in the trade is split. One view is that bids rise during harvest to meet growers. The other is that the market stays flat, with buyers purchasing opportunistically as growers compete for the few homes available. Many growers want to avoid joining a pool of holders like last year, some of whom are still waiting for a price spike. We have said this before and it is worth repeating. For growers running the numbers on forecast yields, a lower headline price matters less than it first appears. Where yields are up, a lower price than last year can still return more $/ha, and growers who have done that sum may be willing to meet lower bids.
Historically, growers who do not sell at harvest tend not to consider selling again until later in the year. This season that group will be large again, selling into a smaller mid-year market.
November to March is when sellers found export homes over the past two seasons, 69% of exports in 2024/25 and 57% in 2025/26. That gives a better forward guide to when the export job is buying than guesswork about where prices might go.
Much of the November volume in those seasons was bulk out of northern New South Wales. In 2024/25 Egypt had no great surplus and bought heavily, lifting November to 138kmt. In 2025/26 a record crop met an Egyptian surplus, and November fell to 61kmt. This year ABARES has New South Wales down about 145kmt, to 285kmt, most of it in the north.
The shipping stems already show it.
As at 17 October no faba beans were booked on any published bulk stem before the end of the year, including Warda variety faba beans from Brisbane and Newcastle, against 200kmt of chickpeas and 102kmt of lentils. Containers do not appear on the stems.
The GrainSource View
Last season exports took half the crop, about a third was sold domestically, and roughly 200kmt remained unsold. We forecast the same pattern this season.
That is roughly 220-370kmt of beans with no home by mid-2027.
Bids are currently thin on both old and new crop fabas. Egyptian bids for Australian fabas currently sit well under grower expectations, and while buyers there are receiving cheaper offers from a record Baltic crop, they have no reason to raise them yet.
Forward contracts have become less common in recent years, and even less so when today’s bids carry no production or quality risk premium. Some growers this season however are already hedging against a flat (and oversupplied) market by booking a proportion of their crop forward into the available domestic bids, which have limited and finite capacity. Harvest will also add more sellers to this market, and we think export bids are increasingly likely to stay flat through harvest, given the low buyer engagement, crop oversupply and both carry-in and projected surplus. Growers with any large volume are likely to be tied to these export bids.
The better value for now may well be forward sales into in upcountry feed markets, for growers who can reach them and with buyers who save on freight. Those domestic homes have limited capacity though and are already filling. The bid value also has to be weighed against what higher-grade beans could earn in the export job, since feed buyers only pay on feed value.
What would change our view
Upside:
An exporter aggressively moves first for volume and drives competing bids higher
Growers hold back enough volume to squeeze supply
Bulk buyers realise they are short of cover with shipping deadlines approaching
The Baltic food-grade crop proves short, lifting demand for quality Australian beans
The A$ falls further
Any of these cases could move port bids toward $450/mt.
Downside:
Egypt increases its buying of lower-quality Baltic beans, cutting Australian demand further
Export buyers find enough cover at lower prices
The first round of export is largely completed by mid-February
Low engagement from Egypt delays or reduces secondary selling in April
In that case bids could sit in the low-$400’s/mt through harvest.
Sources
ABARES Australian Crop Report, September 2026 and March 2026.
UN Comtrade, HS 071350, Australia exporter-reported, monthly, July 2024 to August 2026; season totals and export shares are GrainSource calculations off that series and include broad beans; exports above 100% of the 2023/24 crop drew on beans carried in; the 2026/27 share is taken on crop plus carry-in.
Broker market sheets and the GrainSource price board, faba bids and offers, 15 to 16 October 2026.
Australian bulk grain port shipping stems published under the ACCC port access code, as at 17 October 2026.
Delivered mill bid sheets via Aus Agribusiness, 7 to 9 October 2026.
Eurostat and European Commission DG AGRI for Baltic area, yield and production; the DG AGRI yield carries no publication date.
LAMMC 2026 yield forecast.
Lithuanian and Egyptian trade sources, October 2026, by correspondence and conversation with GrainSource.
Baltic and Australian CIF Egypt indications are single trade sources and not published assessments.
The 220-370kmt surplus by mid-2027, the 350 kmt domestic uptake, the 160-200 kmt carry-over, the 2026/27 crop, export and carry-out forecast, the feed port equivalent, the storage, quality premium and harvest timing observations are GrainSource estimates.
Disclaimer
This report is general market commentary prepared by GrainSource. It is not financial advice and does not take account of your objectives, financial situation or needs. Prices quoted are indicative only and change without notice.
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