Morning Snippets

Corn dipped below $3/bushel in early overnight trade, it's lowest in three years, as the trade gears up for another production increase from the USDA on Friday.

A weak dollar sees the pound up to the dizzy heights of $1.65 this morning.

Indian wheat prices are ignoring the rest of the market, hitting a three week high this morning on strong demand and tight supplies. The government are still to release any of their own state-owned stocks onto the domestic market.

The following is worth a read from the WSJ: Uttar Pradesh Farmers Among Worst Hit by Drought

The Australian Bureau of Meteorology say that "for the 8-month period from January to August 2009, serious to severe rainfall deficiencies remain evident over the south coast of NSW and over central and eastern Victoria." Their definition of a serious deficiency is rainfalls in the lowest 5-10% of historical totals, anything is the lowest 5% is a severe deficiency.

Sunflower harvesting has kicked off in Ukraine, early yields are disappointing and oil content is lower than normal, according to media reports. This season's crop will come in around 6.0 MMT, compared to 6.5 MMT a year ago, say the Agriculture Ministry. The corn harvest is also underway, and will produce around 10 MMT this year, 12% down on last year's 11.4 MMT, they say. Winter grain planting there this year will fall 5.7 % to 7.78 million hectares, they add.

Kazakhstan is a quarter through it's grain harvest producing almost 4.9 MMT, with yields better than last season, according to the Minister of Agriculture.

Taiwan is looking for 60,000 MT of US corn in a routine tender.