The US markets look like they took half a breather in overnight trade. Corn was up a little on continued weather issues across the western corn belt. Flooding and heavy rain are starting to ease but there is some serious infrastructure damage in many counties.
Wheat was generally flat with little bullish or bearish news to push the market one way or the other thus leaving it to the technical traders to create a nothing session.
Soybean futures continue to be caught up with sluggish export data thanks to the Chinese / US trade debacle. Add the building canola stocks in Canada to the oilseed complex and it’s pretty hard to get excited about oilseeds in 2019.
It all points to N.American cereal and corn area increasing where possible. The Canadians are likely to sow more durum and spring wheat thanks to the poor canola price while the USA farmer is likely to up corn acres where possible.
With poor durum values already suggesting that durum may not be much of an option for the US and Canadian farmer there’s a very real possibility that those that do sow it and harvest it this year will only sell a enough to get by. This may weigh heavily on values moving into the last half of 2019 and into 2020.
A quick look around the world shows that most of Russia is good for moisture, maybe a little dry in the Volga Valley. Europe is seeing some good falls in the NW and most of France and Germany are in much better condition than this time last year. Argentina is looking OK with most of the major wheat area seeing 20mm – 50mm over the last couple of weeks.