Mr Southan said the cool finish meant wheat plants filled extra grains, which dropped protein levels.

“There is weather damaged grain about, but more so lots of sound grain that just had low protein.

“The plant puts its energy into increasing yield and with the low temperatures, there is more carbohydrate and less protein in the grain.”

He said it meant alternate markets to traditional hard wheat buyers had to be found for the lower protein grain.

“There is a market for the softer milling wheats, but obviously the prices are significantly lower.”

“It’s a year with high stocks, so we have to just ride through that, the markets will be there, the prices are just depressed.”

“There will be a premium to feed wheat, but certainly, you’d expect prices for ASW to be closer to feed values than hard wheat quotes.”

“The trade will be trying its traditional markets to see whether they will try some parcels of something different.”

In recent years, rusted-on Asian buyers of Australian wheat have been using other wheat, such as North American products, when Australian supplies were low due to the drought.

“There is more willingness now to substitute, which is good and bad – good because it gives you a chance to break into a market, bad because other competitors will try and get their foot in the door.”

However, there will also be hard wheat about, according to Mr Southan.

“It was a very big crop, and while hard wheat as a percentage may be well down, there are patches that did produce hard wheat.

“South Australia, for example, had much more hard wheat than it normally does, while later sown crops in NSW also had better protein levels, to go with their lower yields.”