The Morning Vibe
17/02/12 -- The overnight grains are a bit firmer with beans and wheat around 5 cents higher and corn up 2-3 cents.UkrAgroConsult say that only 26% of winter crops in Ukraine are rated "good" compared to 56% this time last year. It's being suggested in some quarters that they may plant up to 5 million ha of corn there this spring, that would be a 43% increase on 2011 if they did.
February shipments out of Ukraine have slowed right up with only around 600,000 MT of grain being exported in the first half of the month. Less than 100,000 MT of that was wheat. It is being reported that traders there have agreed with the government not to ship more than 1.7 MMT of wheat between now and the end of the 2011/12 marketing year.
India's Minister of Agriculture says that the country will probably beat the official forecast for a record wheat crop of 88.3 MMT this year, without saying by how much.
The Buenos Aires Cereals Exchange kept it's forecasts for soybean and corn production in Argentina unchanged yesterday at 46.2 MMT and 21.3 MMT respectively. There are some decent rains in the forecast for most days in the week ahead.
Another day, another deadline. The Greek job will all be sorted on Monday, some are now saying. If it is America may miss out on the news, they have a nice little three day weekend coming up as it's President's Day on Monday.
The dollar is weaker as "risk on" returns to the markets, with the pound rising above 1.5850 against the greenback. Crude is steady on optimism that Greece is finally going to get the cash it desperately needs.
