Nogger's Blog

10/05/11 -- Wheat is a further 18-20c up on the overnight Globex market this morning, adding to last night's gains, armed with the knowledge that spring wheat plantings in the US only advanced to 22% complete compared with 61% on average. The top spring wheat state of North Dakota only has 7% in the ground compared to 51% normally.

Winter wheat rated good/excellent fell one point to 33% whilst poor/very poor increased from 41% to 42%, with a 2% rise in the very poor category. A whopping 50% of Texas wheat is now rated very poor with a further 26% poor and nothing at all in the excellent category. The top producing state of Kansas only had 18% of it's crop rated good/excellent.

Corn plantings jumped from 13% to 40% complete, still lagging 59% normally at this time, but a pretty impressive performance nevertheless. Soybean sowings at 7% done were also probably above what most people expected.

Canadian spring plantings on the Prairies are well behind at just 3% done.

Pakistan have undercut Australian wheat into the Philippines with a sale of 59,000 MT, according to media reports.

China imported 3.88 MMT of soybeans in April, that's a modest increase on March, but a decrease on April 2010. The USDA still have them down to import 57 MMT in 2010/11, that is starting to look a bit ambitious. That may be one number up for revision tomorrow.

London wheat has opened strongly again, with May up GBP3.25/tonne and Nov GBP2.25/tonne higher. Paris wheat is showing gains of around EUR3-5.00/tonne, with corn, rapeseed and malting barley all higher too.