News Snippets

Posted by Nogger - a legend in his own mind at 12:39 | Categorized as

22/08/12 -- The electronic market is consolidating a little from the early week gains, with soybeans down 12-14 cents, corn 5-6 cents lower and wheat down around 8-9 cents.

Day two of the Pro Farmer Crop Tour pegged Nebraska corn yields at 131.8 bu/acre, well below the USDA's projected 147 bpa. Corn yields in Indiana of 113.3 bpa though were above the USDA's estimate of 100 bpa earlier this month. Both of course are well down on last season's 153.7 bpa and 143.1 bpa respectively.

Soybean pod counts were 894.4 in Nebraska and 1,033.2 in Indiana versus 1,286.5 and 1,137.6 respectively last year.

For soybeans at least the cavalry are coming, eventually, although they haven't actually started planting yet. Michael Cordonnier estimates total South American output for 2012/13 could reach 151.0 MMT versus 114.4 MMT in 2011/12, an increase of almost a third.

Corn output could increase a bit more modestly to 100.5 MMT from 95.5 MMT, he estimates.

A good chum of mine down in Norfolk emailed me this morning to say that he'd cut 100 acres of 1st wheat yesterday that only yielded 2.26 MT/acre. "A normal yield for that sort of land is 4 MT/acre+, it looks more like rice that wheat," he adds. Yikes.

As of August 21, the Ukraine grain harvest was 65% complete producing 25.39 MMT with an average yield of 2.58 MT/ha, say the Ministry. Almost a third of the 2013 winter rapeseed crop has already been planted, they add.

Kazakhstan has harvested 3.135 MMT of grains with an average yield of just 0.73 MT/ha of 28% of the planted area, according to their Ministry of Agriculture.

Russia has formally become a fully paid up member of the WTO today.

South Korea have bought 18,700 MT of Canadian milling wheat.