EU Grains Mostly Post Small Gains, Although Fresh News Lacking

09/07/15 -- EU grains trade with mostly small gains. Yesterday's Chinese jitters have eased a little today, with the stock market there closing with some decent gains following the recent rout.

At the close Nov 15 London wheat was up GBP0.50/tonne at GBP131.50/tonne, Sep 15 Paris wheat was EUR0.75/tonne higher at EUR196.75/tonne, Aug 15 Paris corn was down EUR0.50/tonne to EUR183.75/tonne, whilst Aug 15 Paris rapeseed was up EUR4.25/tonne to EUR388.75/tonne.

US grain markets showed decent gains today, led by soybeans, supporting things across this side of the Atlantic - especially rapeseed.

There's not a huge amount of fresh news about, at least nothing very startling, perhaps we will get that in tomorrow's WASDE report from the USDA?

The FAO have released their latest offerings, predicting a 2015/16 world wheat crop unchanged from a month ago at 723 MMT, some 8 MMT below last year's record. Global ending stocks were lowered 3 MMT to 198 MMT, although that's still more than ample and matches carryout in 2014/15.

They added 5 MMT to this year's global corn crop, taking that up to 1007 MMT, some 19 MMT below last year's record crop. That helped push ending stocks up 3 MMT to 221 MMT, a slight decrease on 224 MMT at the end of 2014/15.

MDA CropCast made a 0.94 MMT downwards adjustment to their 2015/16 global wheat production estimate. The revision coming courtesy of a 0.64 MMT reduction in Canada and a 0.3 MMT decrease in Argentina.

They predicted the world 2015/16 rapeseed crop at 65.21 MMT, slightly below Informa's recent 65.8 MMT. That was down 0.2 MMT on last week, entirely due to Canada.

In Canada they said that "showers remain too light to significantly reduce dryness across the spring wheat belt, and only slight improvements are expected this week, mainly in northern and eastern belt areas. The majority of the growing areas in southwestern areas will remain quite dry, resulting in additional stress."

Russia said that their 2015 harvest is now complete on 1.8 million ha (3.8% of plan), far less than the 3.1 million ha that had already been cut this time a year ago. That's produced a grain crop of 6.7 MMT so far versus 10.9 MMT this time last year. Average yields are said to be up  6.5% at 3.77 MT/ha.

The Russian figures include 3.3 MMT of wheat off 3.3% of the planned area, for which yields are said to be up 4.2% on a year ago at 3.74 MT/ha. Barley yields are said to be doing even better.

FranceAgriMer have tweaked their 2014/15 French balance sheet estimates, raising soft wheat exports from the 18.92 MMT forecast a month ago to 19.31 MMT, a small increase on 19.17 MMT in the previous season.

Soft wheat ending stocks were revised down from 2.98 MMT to 2.66 MMT, although that's still 13.2% more than a year previously.

Corn exports were raised a tad too, up from 7.54 MMT to 7.67 MMT, and ending stocks lowered slightly to 3.31 MMT, again though that's well up (+44.2%) compared to carryout at the end of 2013/14.

French barley exports were little changed from the 6.65 MMT estimated a month ago, but ending stocks were raised from 962 TMT to 1.08 MMT, a 3.6% increase on a year previously.

The Ukraine Ag Ministry said that they might revise down their estimate for a 2015 grain crop of 59-60 MMT if current high temperatures continue for another week.