Nogger's Blog

27/08/12 -- London may be closed, but it's business as usual for the rest of the world's grain markets, and business is higher to start the week with the electronic Globex market seeing soybeans around 20 cents higher, with corn up 4-5 cents and wheat around 2-3 cents firmer.

The market is reacting to the Pro Farmer Crop Tour numbers which were released after the CBOT close on Friday night. They pegged US soybean production this year at 2.6 billion bushels and corn output at 10.478 billion bushels. The former being around 3.5% lower than the USDA's current 2.692 billion bushels estimate, and the latter down 2.8% on the USDA's 10.779 billion bushels.

Reports that China may be considering plans to support economic growth, and the release of a letter from Ben Bernanke saying that the Fed has the room to deliver further QE measures should they be needed are giving the markets a feel good factor. So too were conciliatory comments from Merkel and Hollande concerning the Greek plight over the weekend, even if they were only words and not action (again).

Nov 12 Globex soybeans have hit a contract high in overnight trade, so too have soymeal values on China's Dalian Commodity Exchange.

Egypt has bought 180,000 MT of wheat in a weekend tender, two cargoes from Russia and one from Romania for Oct 1-10 delivery.

Keen to cash in on current wheat prices, India says it has released 1.3 MMT of wheat onto the international market so far and says that it plans to sell a further 100,000 TMT in September and 70,000 MT in October.

Agrimoney report that the late harvest and poor quality of what has been cut for far has seen a spate of feed wheat imports into the UK in recent weeks from origins such as Poland, Denmark, Latvia and Estonia.

Russia's wheat harvest is said to be around 60% complete, producing a crop of around 30 MMT so far. The hot and dry weather there means that the corn harvest is now underway around 10 days earlier than normal.