This Morning's Flavour

26/01/11 -- Wheat is up on the overnight market I see, with front month March having hit 848 1/4 - it's highest since the market went mental at the beginning of August just as the Russians announced their export embargo, and a two year high for a front month.

Food rioting all over North Africa has now spread to Egypt, getting the market all excited that they might be in the market for volume of wheat any day now, mirroring the recent actions of Algeria and Tunisia. The former are tendering for 50,000 MT again this week, but may buy much more.

If they wore hats then Saudi Arabia would have thrown theirs into the ring by now, possibly concerned that others are getting there first, tendering for 500,000 MT of hard wheat. The results of an Iraqi tender are also expected anytime.

As you can see there's no shortage of interest in wheat even if it is at two year highs, if anything interest has intensified.

A report on the excellent Agrimony.com this morning says that militant dockers at the Argentine port of Rosario have started an "indefinite" strike just days after a week-long farmers embargo on sales cut deliveries to the Rosario Grain Exchange by more than 80%.

Reuters report that the German chairman of Nestlé says that it is "madness" to turn agricultural areas over to the production of biodiesel, and that this time food price rises are here to stay. So three cheers for Peter Brabeck. So stop harping on about your bombed-out chippy will you, we're all friends now etc.

Another small hurrah! Farmers supplying First Milk are to get a price increase from 1 Feb, says Farmers' Weekly. Milk Link announced a similar move late last week, upping their price to 26ppl, although that's still 4ppl below what farm leaders say they need to make a profit.

Incidentally the latter still haven't responded to my request for free milk, although they did ring me up and say that their demand for free Nogger content for their website for six months was a little out of order. I still don't like them though.

Following on from yesterdays bad news re UK GDP, Merv the Swerve heaped on more misery when he went on to admit that inflation could rise as high as 5% in the next few months. I think he pronounced "could" wrong there.

Unsurprisingly the pound still has the look of a sick puppy this morning, but that's good news if you're a wheat grower or longholder - London has opened around GBP2.00 higher on both old and new crop, Nov has traded at a lifetime contract high of GBP176.00/tonne.

The US Grains Council, talking their own book again, say that China "could" import more than 7 MMT of corn in 2011, and that they still "might" take 3 MMT of DDGS on top of that "if" they get the green light on imports. What was it my Gran used to say "if ifs and buts were pots and pans, then I'd have a cupboard full of them" or something like that. No hang on it wasn't that, it was "if I had a cock I'd be your Grandad" that was it.

US pig futures prices - they call them hogs just to wind them up, but they're pigs really - hit 5 1/2 month highs yesterday. Hopes are up that US exports will increase as Russia looks for alternatives to German pork which has become "about as popular is piles" following the dioxin scare, according to one market insider.