At Chicago corn held onto gains while wheat and soybeans were lower. Thankfully, the weakness in outer month beans didn’t flow through to the canola market. Paris rapeseed for the Feb23 slot and the Jan23 slot at Winnipeg both closed with small gains.
Week on week Paris rapeseed did see significant losses though. Last Friday the Feb23 contract closed at E688.25, this Friday we saw a close of just E651.75, a week on week fall of AUD$53.81. Although not tracking the fall lower dollar for dollar, local Aussie values at Newcastle port were back AUD$45 from the short term high posted on Monday.
Canola markets continue to be extremely volatile. Locally the Newcastle track price has traded a range of AUD$215 since the beginning of June. Peaking at AUD$965 and then last week’s low of AUD$750. Although it’s unlikely anyone will go broke growing $700 canola, it is still a significant hit to potential profit when prices can vary so considerably and complicates sales timing decisions considerably.

Three more corn boats left Ukraine on Friday, that’s 84kt for the week. I bet they are glad to be out of there. The first of the inbound vessels is yet to pass through the Bosphorus. There are a lot of questions around what the product is like on the boats leaving this week. These boats have been held up in Ukraine ports since fighting began late February, some partially loaded.

The punters are starting to think USDA corn yield estimates may be a tad high. Weeks of hot dry conditions across the western corn belt has seen crops decimated across parts of western Nebraska and Colorado, not huge production areas but the question remains will the “I” states cover these losses.