Morning Yawn

Today is already shaping up to be "one of those days" with very little to get us all excited.

It is however National Cup Cake Week. David Bennett of Leeds is the newly crowned Cupcake Champion of Great Britain 2010 with a Banana & Mango concoction. I don't suppose Dave is much use in a fight though.

Tomorrow is the last day of trading for September contracts on CBOT. Friendless Sept wheat has already opened up a 40c gap between itself and next month December.

Ukraine insists that it will export 15-16 MMT of grains in 2010/11. It doesn't use the words "very slowly" in it's press announcement. The Ukrainian Grain Association said last week that 24 vessels loaded with 380,000 MT of grain hare still awaiting customs clearance, some since as long ago as July 26th.

"I can assure there are no artificially created delays. The point at issue is the vessels where the examination of the quality of grain has not been completed yet," Deputy Customs Chief Serhiy Semka said at a press conference in Kiev on Friday.

Our mate in Ukraine, agronomist Mike Lee, links to this interesting slant on the politics of what is really going on over there.

Some news reports suggest that half of this season's German washout wheat crop will only be feed grade, as opposed to 20% normally.

Rubber prices have bounced back (thank you, thank you) from five days of declines from multi-month highs on better than expected Chinese industrial growth. Prices fell last week on reports that the Chinese authorities were investigating the activities of at least one very large spec long.

Meanwhile Indian condom manufacturers are far from tickled over the rocketing price of latex, according to this report: Going up "India’s condom industry has about 10-15 players, of which, only three to four are big players," it explains. Shame. You'll need to be on a footballer's wages to afford them before long.