Morning News

Posted by Nogger - a legend in his own mind at 08:12 | Categorized as

07/07/11 -- Egypt are back in the market tendering for an unspecified quantity of wheat. Unlike their previous tender three weeks ago though Russian grain hasn't been excluded from the bidding.

It will be interesting to see just how cheap Russian wheat is in this tender. I'll put my money on Egypt buying some, but also throwing a sop by booking some more expensive origin wheat too, just for show.

The ECB is widely expected to raise eurozone interest rates to 1.5% today. The euro is steady ahead of the announcement. Concerns over Greek and Portuguese debt remain.

My man in Romania says "Info so far still very anecdotal, in the south farms are struggling to harvest rape. The crop is fit but rain has stopped play the last week and people are starting to stress and crop loss increasing. Rape yields very mixed but generally poor. Wheat not started.

"In the north almost nothing started yet. Rape will start next week but rains and low temperatures are meaning slow ripening. Wheat still green and 3 weeks away from ready and as still green, rains are improving it daily."

The Ukraine Ministry forecast that heavy June rains will cut the percentage of this season's wheat crop as suitable for milling to 40%, from 45% normally. They haven't changed their production forecast for 2011 though, saying that the country will still harvest 45 MMT of grain.

July London wheat expires today. Good riddance I say.

On the weather front it's gone cooler and wetter across much of the country with localised heavy downpours. We picked up 6.1mm here yesterday with more on the cards over the next few days. Metcheck suggest that things will settle down slowly towards the weekend and into the early part of next week. "There are no real signs of any prolonged hot and dry spells affecting the country during the next couple of weeks," they add.

Looks like another stop-start harvest might be coming up. It's the Great Yorkshire Show next week, so we know what that means. Rain. Then the kids break up the following week, so we know what that means....