US corn, wheat and soybeans futures all closed the week higher, corn at a three month high and wheat at a two month high. Our local wheat prices closed higher, at about the same level they were back in mid August.
The big news was the Chinese deal to buy 5.1mt of US soybeans, there’s not too many details on this out there just yet, so more as it comes to hand. The stronger bean market combined with poor weather across the Canadian Prairies to push canola futures sharply higher. Paris rapeseed didn’t disappoint and followed the canola market higher.
The latest reports suggest around 20% of the Canadian canola crop is still sitting in wet or frozen fields. Snow flurries and showers throughout the week prevented field work and brought a lot of quality speculation into the market place.

Wet weather has stopped winter wheat sowing in the Ukraine. Sown area stands at 4.8mha or around 66% of the expected area. This is down sharply on last year and there are also reports that Ukrainian farmers may well pull up stumps at this level and wait for the spring before continuing to sow spring wheat. To the east in Russia winter wheat sowing has progressed more quickly and official reports show current area is pegged at 15.1mha which is almost 90% of the projected area. The current area is around 300kha more than the total sown area last year.