International news is a little thin this morning with the USA having a public holiday. EU grain and oilseed futures all closed in the green. London feed wheat was up £2.00/t in the January slot, Paris milling wheat was up €3.25/t in the December slot, Paris corn up €0.50/t in the November slot, and Paris rapeseed was €3.00/t higher in the February slot. Brent crude oil was a little higher. Malaysian palm oil was higher, and Delhi chickpeas at 6595Rs/Q are at a seasonal high.

I’m starting to get to the point where I immediately close a market report that starts with fear mongering over a “Super El Nino”, “sky rocking fertilizer prices shifting acres”, or basically any report that is predicting the demise of humanity due to climate change.
It’s pretty apparent to anyone that wasn’t born yesterday that the professional climate analyst have got a lot of things wrong in the last 30 years. I’m not about to get drawn into an adult version of chicken little until these professionals have something more than their beach front properties in the game. As Australians we’ve seen our fair share of climate extremes, it’s gets hot, dry, wet and cold, and often not much in between. If you want to discuss this further we’ll do it over a beer or 10. The current season in NNSW never shaped up as a good one. 39mm between mid December and May 4th wasn’t very inspiring.

It’s time for the northern hemisphere to look at sowing their winter cereals. This will be the next driver in prices from a fundamental perspective. The main driver remains the Black Sea supply issues. There is a growing concern that the Black Sea issues may develop into more than a political issue though. The 30 day precipitation anomaly for much of Ukraine and the black soil plains of Russia is very low. That region has seen just 40% to 60% of normal rainfall. Much of the Volga Valley seeing just 10-20mm over the last 30 days. This isn’t a huge threat just yet, but the combination of less than ideal seed beds, the inability to export what they have grown, and a government plan to reduce sown area, may all combine for a much smaller Russian wheat crop in 2027.