Yesterday, wheat futures fell a little, canola and soybeans rose 1 per cent.
US dollar weakened further.
Cereals prices are declining due to a falling Dollar vs. euro and a lack of new elements on fundamentals.
Infact, this morning, the Eurodollar is dealing at 1.2145 and the Dollar/Rouble at 74.40.
A bearish Dollar is reinforcing the competitiveness of US origins against Russian and European.
However, macro markets remain excited about the vaccine rollouts, with expectations that approval will happen soon in the US, where some of the worst disease impacts continue to grow.
And, beneficial rains on US plains are easing wheat prices in Chicago too.
Yesterday, Canadian State Agency, released its last estimates for Canadian productions.
They pegged Canada’s wheat crop at 35.2Mt, which is above surveyed ideas tending slightly under the mid 34s.
The production of durum wheat is seen at 6.6 Mt, slightly above expectations.
This is a significant increase compared to 5 Mt recorded last year.
The surprise comes from the canola, only expected at 18.7 Mt, which was below most private estimates in the 19s.
Having said that it would be a fairly normal trend for them to later increase their estimates.
But, this is 700 000 t less than last month’s prevision and the lowest level for last five years.
This has helped the Euronext rapeseed to earn 4€/t yesterday on the February delivery.
The palm is gaining some more ground this morning in Kuala Lumpur.
Canadian barley production is estimated at 10.7 Mt vs. 10.4 Mt last season.
On the international market, South Korea bought 68 000 t of corn and Japan 127 000 t of milling wheat sourced from the US, Canada or Australia.
Turkey will close its 400 000 tonnes’ wheat tender today.
Despite rumors yesterday about Chinese purchases of wheat, corn, we didn’t see any flash sales reported today.
Regular export sales had corn at 1.4 million tonnes (Mt), beans 0.4Mt (a marketing year low), and wheat at 446,000t.
Sorghum/milo sales had 176,000t of new China business, plus 106,000t from unknown
So, US/China politics are looking more and more interesting into 2021, with comments the other day from apparent President-Elect Biden that he would not be removing tariffs on China or cancel the trade deal after the inauguration.
Despite the conflict over Trump’s actions, protective anti-China measures have been gaining support in the US in the last few years.
The US drought monitor was out again with a ~2% increase in extreme/exceptional drought areas.
Most of the changes were not in winter wheat areas, although on the flip side there was no noted improvement across the stressed western Hard Red Winter wheat belt.
So, yesterday in Chicago, the wheat futures fell a little, instead the soybean market rebounded on hopes to see China resuming its purchases after the cancellation of two cargoes last week.
In this context, funds were net sellers in 3 500 lots of wheat but net buyers in 10 000 lots of corn and 13 500 lots of soybean.
The crude oil is benefitting from the OPEC+ consensus around a gradual and coordinated recovery of the oil production from January.
The WTI barrel is dealing above 46 $/b this morning.
Veg oils prices were well oriented yesterday despite of growing fears on the demand side following another jump of the Covid-19 epidemic in the US.
Weather conditions are improving in Brazil and in Argentina thanks to further rains.
South American weather maps continue to look better for the crop there, with a nice widespread rainfall event across almost all of the central Brazilian soybean area.
Earlier planted crops have been showing more stress in recent days, but the hope for farmers there is that the beans can rebound with the coming moisture.
Today, may be we will see little evolution in prices as traders stay cautious before the weekend.
In Russia, current temperatures are not raising any particular concerns for now.
Black Sea region weather maps are starting to flirt with moisture on the deferred outlooks, but still nothing substantial and snow cover remains poor with the cold snap.
Aussie barley markets started to weaken late in the day yesterday, with bids dropping $4-5/t across most of WA and SA
Patchy storms across the eastern Darling Downs saw isolated registrations of 50+ mm rain reported.
Damage has been reported in some areas from the high winds, but anyone that got moisture has been happy to see it and there are some hopes increasing for sorghum fields
Australian weather maps have more light rains on the forecast for southern Vic into the weekend, but next week forecasts looking very good for fieldwork across the east coast.
