As the northern hemisphere heads into the winter dormancy period don’t expect any significant market moving news. We may be in for a short period of sustained or rangebound prices. Managed money has pulled back their speculative position in both US and EU futures markets in search of greener fields and crop condition reports are generally flat given the dormancy.
Going into the winter period Russian crops were probably in the worse shape of the major producers which if the weather is not forgiving during winter and spring may result in smaller production estimates in March / April / May due to winter kill.
The other location to watch is S.America and how much rain they see across the major soybean and corn regions over the next couple of months. Over the last fortnight Argentina has seen some useful falls, someone must have started to harvest wheat. The NE region of Argentina where most of the heaviest rain fell is a little NE of the major corn production regions. Falls across SE Cordoba and southern Santa Fe where around 40% of the corn is grown were lighter but helpful. Falls across Buenos Aires were lighter to the NE but heavier towards the SE and SW where the bulk of the BA corn crop is grown taking 14 day rainfall there to about average.
Conditions across much of the Brazilian soybean region has been very dry, I’ve seen pictures on Twitter of fields actually dyeing. Over the next 7 days there is expected to be some very good falls across the driest regions of southern Brazil. This may see increased selling in soybean futures, so potentially limiting upside in canola futures in the short term. Cash bids for canola out of SW Saskatchewan were back a little overnight. Futures at both the ICE and Paris were also a touch softer.