With autumn drilling well underway, two grain traders suggest soft wheat could be firmly back in rotations for many farmers.

GrainCo’s James Clark says he’d previously experienced a few ‘false dawns’ with Group 3 Soft wheats. However, he believes one variety’s arrival in 2023 proved timely for a sector that appeared in terminal decline.

“Although as a business we’re still trading much higher volumes of hard wheat, there’s little doubt that one variety has singularly revitalised the soft wheat supply, accounting for the increased tonnage we’ve seen this season.

“Like many traders, I was cautiously optimistic about Bamford when it entered the Recommended List. Yes, it had trialed well, but we were only just getting over the disappointment of another Group 3 which had also looked promising before succumbing to septoria.”

Growing market share

Fast forward to this autumn and Bamford, with two challenging seasons now under its belt, has already captured 10% of the winter wheat market. James says its begun to change hearts and minds in a sector that was looking rather hard wheat-centric.

“Factor in yields high enough to compete with the best Hard Group 4 Feeds, a 6.6 for septoria, the Pch1 Rendezvous resistance gene to eyespot, consistently high bushel weights favored by distillers and good protein levels, and you have a variety with many talents.

“Although it’s difficult to pinpoint just how much of the soft wheat we’ve traded is specifically Bamford, it’s clear a lot of Bamford grain has ended up in flour mills and it’s taken a significant share of the total soft biscuit wheat that we sell.”


Price parity

Jeremy Pope of ADM Milling also recognises Bamford’s recent success. He says he sees price parity between soft and hard wheat, as well as continued consistency of supply and grain quality from soft wheats such as Bamford, as key going forward.

“There’s good milling demand for Bamford and what we’ve seen this year is that the quality of soft wheat across all the key metrics – including protein levels, bushel weights and Hagberg, have been equal to those of hard wheat.

“Following Harvest 2025, we supplied 250 lorry loads of soft wheat to our mills in the UK – 124 of those loads have been Bamford.

“Another positive, is that we’ve predominantly used soft wheat in two of our mills, and, in both those mills, we’ve been able to buy soft wheat at the same price as hard. By buying both at parity, we’ve been able to successfully adjust our recipes with customers to include soft wheat in them.”

The right direction

While ADM still trades significantly more hard wheat than soft, Jeremy believes Bamford’s success is a step in the right direction. “In terms of the future, if supply and quality can be guaranteed then I’m confident our larger customers will buy more soft wheat if we can obtain the same price versus hard.

“Whether they’ll ever return to a 50/50 supply ratio is difficult to forecast, particularly when you bring in other important factors such as the wheat price and what the size of the winter wheat area will be for the upcoming season.

“The wheat price has been falling since February and was around £166/t at the time of writing (mid-September) so prices are down; it’ll be interesting to see what growers decide this autumn. However, there’s no doubt that Bamford’s success could be a major factor for many growers tempted to switch allegiance from hard to soft ahead of Harvest 2026,” he concludes.