Today I’ll ask the serious questions, like how many cups of coffee does it take to counter the hay fever pills ? Can you die from hay fever ? Can you overdose on hay fever eye drops ? And if you blow your nose 30 times in 5 minutes, what are the chances of rapid dehydration ? Here I was thinking that due to the dry weather the hay fever odds would be in my favour this spring, but no, I shall yet again bath in a tub of misery and snot until November.

Now I’ve got that off my chest, let’s see what happened in the world of grain marketing over night.
We are in the middle of the northern hemisphere spring sown grain harvest at present. So as you might expect, any attempt to rally is being met with selling from the producer. That is unless you are a Russian or Ukraine producer, and your grain is now worth about half of what it cost to grow it.
Argentina may have also thrown a spanner in the US corn rally. The Buenos Aires Grain Exchange production estimate increased 2mt to 66mt.
Russia is said to be utilizing fertilizer port facilities in the Baltic and Arctic coasts to handle wheat exports. This isn’t going to cover the tonnage not being exported out of the Black Sea, but it may help Russia honor some of it’s prior supply commitments in the short to mid term.
US weekly wheat export inspection for last week were pretty average at 335kt, not the 500kt to 1.0mt that the US market wants to see. As Middle Eastern and African buyers, unable to access Black Sea wheat, rush to bu expensive US HRWW, it ain’t happening.
The punters are keeping a close eye on the sowing pace of the Russian winter crops. It’s the slowest pace it has been since 2013, then by now just 5.9mha was in the ground. Current progress estimates show around 6.1mha of winter grain has been sown. The slow pace is being blamed, not only on some dry patches, but on the very low domestic price of most winter cereals at present.
Saskatchewan durum values crept higher again last night, up CAD$3.69/t to CAD$307.01/t for a Dec lift, still over CAD$10 below the wheat price.