EU Wheat Closing Comments

EU wheat continues to slide gently lower, after much of the quick-fire damage was done in the aftermath of the USDA report a fortnight ago. London March feed wheat ended down GBP0.05 at GBP100.55/tonne, and Paris March Milling wheat finished EUR0.50 lower at EUR126.75/tonne.

Prices are still a little way off post harvest September lows, but not by much. US wheat continues to slide and EU futures are going with it.

Despite sharply reduced US winter wheat plantings for the upcoming 2010 crop, carryover supplies of old crop are so burdensome that the market seemingly cannot shake them off.

Monday's export inspections for US wheat looked pretty promising, so this week's shipment should be quite good. They need to be to meet the USDA's target of 22.5 MMT exported during 2009/10.

Egypt are tendering again this week for 120,000 MT of wheat from the usual suspects. The last time they bought, Russian and Kazakh wheat got the nod. French grain continues to miss out due to the recently introduced one port of loading clause. The trade is quickly becoming resigned to the fact that US and EU wheat will dip out again, regularly.

The psychotic element in me says, hey if you don't want our wheat then sod you. What are you going to do when Russia has a bad crop? What are you going to do when the Black Sea is frozen over Mr Egypt?

We'll have so much interest from our new mates the bioethanol industry by then that you will have to pay miles over the odds to buy wheat on the global market. Ha, you will come begging at our door when the sold out sign is up. So stick that in your stupid funny pipe and smoke it.

But the realist in me says that this is unlikely to happen anytime soon.