Morning News

13/03/13 -- The overnight grains are mixed with wheat and corn generally around 2-3 cents firmer and soybeans 2-3 cents weaker. The market has an uneasy look heading towards the USDA's quarterly grain stocks report and their early planting intentions numbers both due at the end of the month.

Dow Jones Newswires are reporting Turkish millers buying new crop Russian wheat at USD268 C&F, which equates to around GBP180/tonne - and remember this is for milling wheat and including freight. That makes Nov 13 feed wheat at GBP183.50/tonne look a sell, for all the woes of the domestic crop at the moment.

Russia have sold a further 61,267 MT of grain in it's now regular twice weekly sale of intervention stocks, bringing the total sold to date to 2.25 MMT.

Early spring planting is underway in parts of the Southern and North Caucasian districts, with 175.4 thousand ha in the ground, according to the Russian Ministry of Agriculture. Spring grains and oilseeds will be planted on 30.3 million ha, they forecast.

Kazakhstan's national statistics agency say that Mar 1st grain stocks there stood 36% down on year ago levels at 11.4 MMT.

CBH Group say that Australia's wheat crop will rise 11.6% to 24.0 MMT in 2013/14. Ending stocks this season will finish at a 4-year low of 4.0 MMT (well below the USDA's forecast of 5.7 MMT) and versus 7 MMT in 2011/12, they say.

Chinese Industry analysts said China’s soybean crush volume in the October 1st 2012 – March 1st 2013 period was 25.61 MMT, down 604,438 MT from a year ago.

They estimate China’s February soybean imports at 3.67 MMT, well above the official Chinese customs figure of 2.9 MMT. March bean imports are estimated at 3.94 MMT, April's at 4.0 MMT, May's at 6.0 MMT and June's at 6.7 MMT. February is traditionally the quietest month of the year for soybean imports.

The USDA attaché in Beijing says China will import 65.5 MMT of soybeans in 2013/14, up 4% on this year as their domestic production falls 4% to 12 MMT.

UkrAgroConsult estimate Ukraine’s 2013 sunseed crop at 9.51 MMT, up 11% from a year ago. They also estimate Ukraine’s 2013 ever growing soybean crop at 2.71 MMT, up 17% from a year ago.

China recently only sold 5,000 MT of the 100,000 MT of state-owned rapeseed oil in a government auction, they will offer again this week.

"Following favourable rainfall in the first 7 days of March, it has become very dry again in several parts of Argentina, stressing later planted soybeans," say Oil World.

There are some interesting charts here from Saxobank showing various spreads between soybeans, corn and wheat. Note particularly the steady widening of the differential between Paris and CBOT wheat which has been taking place since last July, and also recent changes in the corn:wheat ratio.

There's already talk about US planting delays in the Deep South, given the projected extreme tightness in 2012/13 carryout for corn and beans. This was not reflected in data this week's data showing Louisiana corn planting at 20% complete versus only 6% on average.