The Morning Papers

Posted by Nogger - a legend in his own mind at 10:35 | Categorized as

31/08/12 -- The overnight electronic market is lower with beans 6-10 cents easier, corn down 5-7 cents and wheat falling 7-10 cents.

Month end, a 3-day Labor Day holiday weekend and first notice day for Chicago's September contracts may all encourage a bit of profit-taking.

On the agenda today we have the Russians meeting to decide what, if anything, they are going to do about their shrinking harvest and rapid early season export pace.

Ahead of that meeting we have the Russian Ministry re-iterating their 2012/13 grain export forecast of 10-14 MMT, of which around 4.6 MMT has been shipped in the first two months of the marketing year. The official grain production estimate is now 70 MMT from 70-75 MMT previously.

Later today we also have Ben Bernanke speaking at the impressive sounding Jackson Hole (didn't he win a couple of medals at the Olympics?), where the market will be hoping for some hints at the imminent launch of the good ship QE3.

The results of the Saudi wheat tender are out later today too. I'd expect to see them share the business around, like the usually do and as per their last tender which was split between the EU, US, Australia and Canada.

Kazakhstan says it's harvested just over 5 MMT of grain off 44% of the planted area, with yields averaging only 0.75 MT/ha, 46% down on this time last year.

Brussels issued 369 TMT of soft wheat export licences this week, the best weekly total of the marketing year so far methinks. That brings the 2012/12 YTD total to 1.8 MMT, 17% down on where we were this time last year.

Cumulative barley export licences of 1.4 MMT are almost double this time a year ago.

The Ukraine Ag Ministry now estimate Ukraine’s 2012/13 grain exports at 20.0 MMT versus their previous estimate of 22.0 MMT and 22.8 MMT in 2011/12.

AgRural estimate Brazil's 2012/13 soybean crop at a record 82 MMT, with planted area up 11.6% to a record 27.9 million hectares. That would place soybean output 23.5% higher than this year. Planting in the top producing state of Mato Grosso begins in just over a fortnight.

The German Ministry estimate the grain crop there at 44.7 MMT, up 6.7% on last year, and almost a million tonnes more than the German Farmers' Association (DBV) estimate of 43.8 MMT. Wheat output is seen at 22.5 MMT, a bit below Toepfer's recent 22.8 MMT forecast, but above the pessimistic view of the DBV's 21.9 MMT.

The Ministry place German rapeseed production at 4.8 MMT, a 25% increase on last year and 0.4 MMT higher than the DBV.