Nogger's Blog

08/05/15 -- The overnight grains are little changed in early trade, although beans, corn and wheat all showed significant losses at last night's close in Chicago.

The pound is sharply higher early doors as it looks like Big Dave will get another shot at government. That might not help London wheat too much when that drags it's sorry arse out of bed later on.

Talking of which, did you see how poor old May 15 Paris wheat got on yesterday? Lordy, lordy! What a right royal pasting that took, it had it's dinner money taken off it, it's head flushed down the toilet several times and then it was tied to the railings with it's underpants round it's ankles with "I love Nick Clegg" written across it's chest in pink lipstick.

It's not been a good year as far as credibility is concerned for the Paris wheat contract has it?

The frenetic EU wheat export pace appears to be slowing. Brussels only issued 273 TMT worth of soft wheat export licences this past week, down from 587 TMT the previous week. Still, season to date exports now stand at 28 MMT, up 11% versus 25.2 MMT a year ago. The problem is that even at that record pace carryover stocks will still be sharply higher than they were a year ago.

Barley exports for the past week were 167 TMT, taking the season to date total to 7.8 MMT versus 5.25 MMT a year ago.

Corn imports are now at 7.95 MMT, a 35% decline on this time last year.

Brussels also awarded 12 TMT worth of licences to import Ukraine wheat under the special duty free arrangement that exists between them. They've now granted around 415 TMT worth of licences to import wheat under this preferential deal out of the 950 TMT of duty free quota that exists for 2015.

Yes, it does seem crazy to be doing this with prices on their arses doesn't it? No more crazy than loaning them billions of euros in credit to piss it up against the wall mind.

Ukraine remind me of "Little Derek" the local tramp who legend has it somehow got a three grand grant to do some course or other and promptly whisked all of his mates off into York in a taxi no less to give it some large. The college never saw Little Derek or got anything at all for it's money of course, but the pubs of York had a brilliant weekend's worth of takings. That's Ukraine, but smelling slightly less of wee.

A Russian business newspaper are reporting that they've bribed the right people in the government with a few crates of vodka (and possibly a few "ladies" as well) to find out what is going to happen with the wheat export duty.

The un-named sources have been singing like birds apparently. The government will only impose a "token" one dollar export duty on wheat starting on Jul 1, as long as prices remain below 12,000 roubles/tonne (currently $237.25), they say.

Considering that Russian wheat was sold to Egypt at under $200/tonne this week, then a dollar it is then for the foreseeable it would seem.

The Buenos Aires Grain Exchange say that the Argie soybean crop is 68.6% harvested, up 6.8 points on the week and 4.6 points ahead of a year ago. That means that they've harvested 46.4 MMT of the expected record 60 MMT so far.

The corn harvest only advanced 1.1 points to 29.5% done this week. That's 8.6 MMT in the bin out of an anticipated 25 MMT.

The Argie Ag Ministry say that farmers there are 31% sold on beans versus 25% done this time last year. They've flogged 43% of their corn crop (against 34% a year ago) along with 72% of their wheat (50% last year).

The Rosario Grain Exchange say that Argie soybean yields in the core area have been coming in 25% ahead of last year.

There's talk that the US corn crop could be 85% planted when the USDA report on that on Monday night.

That's all folks, I'm on the road to Devon for the rest of the day....