Nogger's Blog

21/03/12 -- The overnight grains didn't offer much this morning, with beans 1-3 cents firmer and corn & wheat 2-3 cents weaker. Crude is up slightly and the dollar is a touch firmer against the pound and the euro.

French cereal lobby Orama said yesterday that 700,000 ha of winter crops have suffered winterkill and will need to be replanted, that's 8 percent of the total area sown in the autumn and easily the largest estimate yet, which immediately puts me in mind of the little boy who cried wolf for some reason.

They also said that the European debt crisis is over and that President Sarkozy is in reality six foot tall and is only made to look small via a complicated combination of smoke & mirrors to keep Angela Merkel happy.

As ever we are all once again hanging on the USDA's every word awaiting next week's planting intentions report. The corn area is seen anywhere between 93.7-95.5 million acres depending on who you want to run with, versus 94 million at the February Outlook Forum.

The post-War high for corn area was the 93.527m acres planted in 2007.

For soybeans we are looking at an area of 74.7-76.7 million acres (the USDA Forum last month said 75 million), and for wheat 57-59.2 million (58 million last month).

Meanwhile we have improved weather conditions for developing winter wheat, which are also conducive for early corn planting which is putting the grains under a little bit of pressure.

Morocco and Algeria are both said to have bought South American wheat, with EU and US origins too expensive.

The Russian export pace has faded at such a rate that breaching the government's 27 MMT limit suddenly looks highly unlikely. Ukraine is still going hammer and tongs at corn exports in particular, although they've also sold 100,000 MT of wheat to Bangladesh this week.

Early calls for this afternoon's CBOT session: corn & wheat 2-4 cents lower, soybeans up 2-3 cents.