EU Wheat Lower As USDA Fallout Continues
The market is still coming to terms with yesterday's bearish wheat numbers from the USDA, and figure out how close to reality some of the figures are really likely to be.
Certainly some of them at least look questionable, but at least for now that's what the market is stuck with, even if world ending stocks increased from 174.2 MMT to 177.0 MMT, they are still 9.6% down on last season.
FranceAgriMer came out today with some revised production and stocks numbers for 2012/13 themselves. They estimate soft wheat production there at 35.8 MMT in 2012, a 5.4% increase on last year, with durum output up 20% at 2.4 MMT. The bottom line is an all wheat crop of 38.2 MMT versus 36.0 MMT last year and very similar to the USDA's 38.15 MMT estimate.
Exports of soft wheat to non-EU destinations were raised 0.5 MMT from last month, reflecting strong demand from North Africa and the Middle East, to 10.0 MMT, a 17.6% increase on last year's 8.5 MMT.
French soft wheat ending stocks were placed 14% down on year ago levels to 1.96 MMT.
Ukraine said that its domestic grain harvest is now 99% complete at 46.43 MMT, down 20% on a year ago. Exports however are 71% up at 12.78 MMT as of Dec 11, including 5.65 MMT of wheat with a further 178 TMT of wheat sitting at the ports waiting to load. That will likely conclude their wheat export programme for 2012/13.
The corn harvest there is almost over at 98% done, producing 20.06 MMT in bunker weight so far.
Hidden in amongst yesterday's USDA data was an unchanged look for UK wheat production in 2012 of 13.5 MMT, around 200 TMT more than the HGCA estimate, with yields at 6.75 MT/ha versus the HGCA's 6.68 MT/ha.
