Morning Snippets

Posted by Nogger - a legend in his own mind at 11:15 | Categorized as

14/03/13 -- The overnight grains are mostly a little lower, although nearby corn remains steady which is supporting wheat. March contracts go off the board tonight. London and Paris wheat are showing modest gains.

MDA CropCast have cut their Argy soybean production estimate by 730 TMT from last week to 49.34 MMT, mainly due to earlier dryness. Output in Brazil is forecast unchanged from last week at 81.43 MMT.

They're also out with early forecasts for world crop production in 2013/14, pegging the US soybean crop at 87.56 MMT, up 3.38 MMT from last week and 15% up on last year. In Brazil they go 80.67 MMT and in Argentina 54.08 MMT.

Elsewhere they have the EU rapeseed crop in 2013/14 at 17.84 MMT. Their EU-27 barley production estimate is 53.6 MMT, up 1.1 MMT from last week due to "favourable winter conditions."

IKAR estimate the Russian wheat crop at 50 MMT this year, say Bloomberg. That's up by almost a third on the USDA's 2012/13 crop figure of 37.7 MMT.

Japan have bought 130,533 MT of US, Canadian and Australian wheat in their regular weekly tender.

Malaysia are said to be deferring a tender to purchase 350 TMT of wheat for Jul/Sep shipment in anticipation of lower prices. They're probably right, although I always feel a bit uncomfortable when EVERYONE feels bearish. Australian standard white wheat prices are said to have fallen USD20-25/tonne in the past month.

India are said to have sold a trial shipment of 13,700 MT of corn to China at USD275/tonne FOB for April shipment. I imagine that they will attempt to make sure that it's squeaky clean to pass Chinese customs standards. One thing it has got going for it is that it's GM free.

Soybeans on the Chinese Dalian Exchange have closed lower for a fourth successive session on talk that Chinese pig prices are below the cost of production and demand for meal therefore might drop.

Maybe that's why they've started dumping pigs into rivers there? See This little piggie didn't go to market.

FranceAgriMer have raised their estimate for 2012/13 wheat ending stocks from 2.4 MMT to 2.6 MMT. The shift is "due to the drop in non-EU exports" say Agritel.

"The disappointing weather conditions in France are penalising loading on the Atlantic coast. As for crop development, the recent cold spell doesn’t seem to have caused much trouble. The crop emergence should be delayed though," they add.