There’s a saying in the US grain futures market, “the bulls need feeding every day”. This simply means that a rally needs constant bullish news to sustain it. The dry weather in Canada, the potential destruction of a nuclear power plant in Ukraine, the possible abandonment of the Black Sea grain initiative, potential weather damage to US wheat, drought across N.Africa, a heatwave on the North China Plain, a winter drought in Spain, feed wheat across much of the Italian durum crop…… these snippets are just little things, not worthy of more than a days’ worth of headlines. Hardly a day goes by lately when I think the world hasn’t gone crazy.

Corn futures pushed higher in the nearby months. The recent dip in corn futures, combined with a poor outlook for many fields across the central US corn belt triggered speculative and technical buying for the 2023 crop months.
The losses in US wheat futures were attributed to technical selling. There’s a bit of harvest pressure in the US too. We are seeing this come through with lower white wheat values out of the Pacific Northwest, as well as in SRWW and HRWW futures at Chicago. MGEX spring wheat futures again rallied sharply, spurred on by the poor condition across the Canadian Prairies.
The 14-day anomaly for southern Saskatchewan indicates less than 30% of the average rainfall for the last two weeks. The 30-day anomaly isn’t much better. The 7-day forecast calls for some showers across eastern Alberta and potentially across the far west of the durum belt in Saskatchewan but once again the bulk of the country in central and eastern Sask could miss out. With cereal crops coming into head and canola flowering across the Prairies, rainfall over the next two weeks is crucial to prevent significant yield penalties there.