The punters appeared most active in soft red winter wheat futures at Chicago, the nearby May contract making some good gains by the close. Higher grade hard red winter wheat and spring wheat saw less volatility. Fundamental strength was said to have came from rising tension in the Black Sea. With fighting again picking up between Russia and Ukraine…. yawn.
The Black Sea, Russia / Ukraine war has been something that has muddied the water for a while now and will probably continue to do so. In 2014 wheat exports were not affected by the problems between Russia and Ukraine. In 2022 many grain analyst expected to see a similar outcome but Ukraine called an unexpected halt to wheat exports, even though there had been little to no aggression to grain ships. This sent the futures market into a spin, regardless of what the current S&D for wheat was at the time. Over time wheat export paths were negotiated and wheat continued to flow out of the Black Sea at bargain prices, quickly deteriorating price premiums put in place while exports were stopped, falling to where we are now.
The potential for issues to impact on grain flow out of the Black Sea remains high, but also remains unlikely if we are to look back over the events in 2014 and over the last 2 years. Politics have played a larger role than physical events, i.e. Ukraine stopping their wheat exports in 2022.

The French wheat crop G/E rating remained unchanged week on week at 65% G/E, 23% fair and 13% poor / very poor. This is not a bad rating but is well below what the crop was rated at this time last year. The 14 day rainfall anomaly for Europe continues to show some very wet regions across France and Spain. Germany and Poland are also seeing better than average rainfall, Italy, Romania and Bulgaria are drier than average. Some parts of France have seen 300% – 400% above average rainfall over the last 14 days, much of central, eastern and south east France receiving 50 – 100mm over the fortnight. Rain at this stage of crop development is generally not an issue. One might even expect average yields could be exceeded.