Friday:

They must be running a book by now on how long it will be before someone puts a bullet through that rooster in the US. Seriously, has the world gone crazy. Fancy someone paying the media to say something that’s not true, well, I’ll be.
It’s right up there with the Indian government suspending trade in futures for chickpeas a while back because there was too much speculation……um..it’s futures market ?

In the land of the free the markets were yet again unexciting. Corn flat, wheat flat to softer and soybeans took a breather shedding a couple of cents per bushel. Nothing has changed fundamentally and we are still a month off the thaw in the northern hemisphere, will this market survive or simply die of boredom before the snow melts.

Brazil has told the world they are expecting another great corn and soybean crop after recent rains threatened to delay the second plant corn crop. Instead it appears all is perfect and rain makes plants grow too. Reuters has reported the Brazilian Ag Minister Blair Maggi believes “there will be a repeat of last season’s super crop”. There is doubt that the Argentinean official in charge of forecasting will be calling their own crop a super crop though. Weather remains inconsistent across Argentina with the driest parts remaining dry in the short to midterm while the NE see’s further falls.

Monday:

With the US markets closed overnight information is a little thin on the ground this morning. If your are to take your lead from the EU markets we see London feed wheat futures firmer, Paris milling wheat firmer, Paris corn a tad softer while Paris rapeseed is also firmer. So generally speaking the only pressure on grain today will be from the stronger Aussie dollar.
The AUD peaked out at 79.35c overnight before slipping away to close at about 79.12, about 9c higher than we’d all like to see it. The AUD is slightly firmer against all our major trading parties this morning.

In Canada we see PDQ prices quoting 1CWAD13 durum at C$261.91 for March delivery, this represents a fall of about C$10 over the last month. Canadian exports have been a little slow and most punters believe that stocks there will increase prior to their new crop harvest in July. This isn’t great news for durum at the moment as this would see Canada holding both high quality and low quality durum stocks. Canada continues to argue with Italy about their country of origin labelling laws and the additional costs it will inflict on imports. They appear to be having as much impact on the Italian decision as what Australia efforts had on Indian chickpea import duties.

The weather map shows Argentina remaining dry, parts of the HRW belt in the US getting rain, that’s a little bearish wheat and most of the FSU wheat states seeing average to above average rainfall over the next week or two. China is also mostly wet where it’s needed