Wt Agriculture Discussion Threads

[chalky] 21/2/2022 15:45

Agriculture should be on a steady move up as food inflation is on the move this year.

[bobdouthwaite] 10/8/2012 15:41

and more food inflation is on the way.......

Corn prices hit record after US cuts harvest hopes

[traderabc] 16/7/2012 12:12

I hope when the precious metal market turns up it looks a bit like this one.

[bobdouthwaite] 18/5/2011 10:59

Problems persist:

DJ US GRAIN AND SOY REVIEW: Corn, Wheat Surge On Weather Threats
05/17/11 16:23:08 EDT

By Tom Polansek
Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES


CHICAGO (Dow Jones)--U.S. grain futures surged Tuesday as persistent rains
fueled worries farmers won't plant as much corn and wheat as they had planned.

Corn soared 22 3/4 cents, or 3.3%, to a one-week high of $7.20 1/4 a bushel,
while soft red winter wheat climbed 27 1/2 cents, or 3.7%, to $7.64 a bushel.
July is the most actively traded contract for each market at the Chicago Board
of Trade.

Forecasts for cool, wet weather increased worries about plantings after
government data showed farmers are well behind schedule in sowing crops in
Indiana, Ohio and North Dakota. Farmers may give up on planting this spring
unless the weather clears up because late-planted crops often produce less
grain.

"We're running out of time," said Bill Gentry, analyst at Risk Management
Commodities, a brokerage in Indiana.

Traders are on edge about corn planting, in particular, because farmers need
to harvest a big crop next fall to rebuild inventories, which are projected to
reach a 15-year low this year. Concerns about tight supplies drove corn futures
to record highs last month, and prices have since pulled back 8%.

The relentless rains have led analysts to downgrade their expectations for
plantings, indicating the harvest will also be smaller than expected.
AgResource Company, a Chicago-based consultancy, predicted corn plantings would
fall nearly 2% short of the government's forecast for 92.2 million acres due to
poor weather.

"The date on the calendar now makes planting delays a problem we may not
overcome," said Tim Hannagan, analyst for PFG Best, a brokerage in Chicago.

As of Sunday, 63% of the nation's corn was planted, behind the five-year
average of 75% for that time of year, according to federal data. In Ohio, which
saw its wettest April on record, farmers had planted just 7% of the corn crop,
below the average of 70% for that time of year.

Soggy conditions have prevented farmers in North Dakota from sowing corn and
spring wheat, a variety used to make bread. Corn was 14% planted in the state,
behind the average of 55%, and spring wheat was 15% planted, behind the average
of 68%.

"North Dakota's a mess," said Jim Gerlach, president of A/C Trading, a
brokerage in Indiana.

Spring wheat planting was 36% complete nationwide as of Sunday, behind the
average of 76% for that time of year, according to the government. North Dakota
is the country's top producer of the grain.

Planting delays are just the latest weather problem to hit wheat farmers and
boost prices. Growers of winter wheat in Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas have seen
their crops devastated by a severe drought.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture, in a weekly crop report, lowered its
good-to-excellent rating for winter wheat one percentage point to 32%. That's
down from 66% a year ago.

"The USDA's weekly crop progress reports were a continuation of the rather
disconcertingly bad reports of the past several weeks," said Dennis Gartman,
publisher of the Gartman Letter.

Farmers have started harvesting winter wheat in Texas and Oklahoma,
confirming significant crop losses. They hope to see better results from the
corn harvest in late summer and early fall.

Soybean futures felt spillover support from the gains in the grain markets.
Soybeans for July delivery rose 1.1% to $13.41 a bushel.

Other Markets


CBOT July soyoil ended 0.2% higher at 56.04c/pound; July soymeal ends 1.4%
higher at $350.40/short ton. U.S. rice futures finished higher, as grain
markets extended gains on weather concerns. Rains and floods are delaying
planting in the South. The USDA confirmed the disruptions, saying farmers had
sown 69% of the crop as of Sunday, below the average of 83% for that time of
year. CBOT July rice ended 28 1/2 cents or 2% higher at 14.39 per
hundredweight.

Ethanol futures advanced as corn rallied, with the July contract rising 3
cents, or 1.2%, to 2.534 a gallon. Oat futures strengthened on concerns about
cool, wet weather preventing farmers from planting in Canada and the northern
U.S. Plains. July oats gained 3 1/2 cents, or 1%, to $3.48 a bushel.


-By Tom Polansek, Dow Jones Newswires; 312-341-5780;
[e-mail]

--Andrew Johnson Jr. contributed to this report.


(END) Dow Jones Newswires

05-17-11 1623ET

Copyright (c) 2011 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.

[traderabc] 17/5/2011 22:27

Big Borrowed Bucks for Starbucks Coffee

[bobdouthwaite] 26/4/2011 13:54

From Agrimoney: Wheat production still under the cosh...

Rains ring alarms over soft red winter wheat too

America's soft red winter wheat, a beacon of hope for wheat output amid extreme conditions harming other crops, is coming up against its own weather setbacks, which have lifted disease concerns.

Concerns for world wheat continue to centre on America's hard red winter variety, the country's main wheat crop which has suffered persistent dryness, leaving only 5% of Oklahoma's fields in "good" or "excellent" condition, according to a government report out late on Monday.

"Although the weekend rains [in Oklahoma] were desperately needed, it may be too late to benefit the wheat crop as conditions are still dismal and yield potential has been severely limited," the US Department of Agriculture said.

The briefing also highlighted fears for America's rain-delayed spring wheat sowings, pegging them at 6% completed, compared with an average of 25% by now.

'Disease issues'

However, brokers put the US soft red winter on the watch list too after USDA showed the condition of this variety deteriorating, if remaining at elevated levels.

In Illinois and Missouri, where growers more than doubled sowings of the wheat variety last autumn, the proportion of crops rated "good" or "excellent" tumbled by nine points to 56%, and 13 points to 58%, respectively.

"There are worries about soft red winter wheat too. It's wet," Mike Mawdsley at broker Market 1 said.

At Macquarie, Alex Bos highlighted fears "that if the rain continues, more disease issues will start cropping up in soft red winter".

The variety - the one traded in Chicago - has a lower protein content, and is typically cheaper, than the harder wheats, and is typically used in cakes and biscuits, as well as commonly in livestock feed.

Yield prospects

However, he added that it was "still too early to start talking about yield loss" in soft red winter wheat, unlike for hard red winter crop, for which estimates for the US harvest had been cut from more than 800m bushels nearer to 750m bushels, and which he believed come in "closer to 735m-740m bushels".

Furthermore, the slow rate of spring sowings had put the USDA's estimate of 14.4m acres of spring wheat in doubt.

"There is an increased risk that might end up below 14m acres if it does not warm up quickly," Mr Bos told Agrimoney.com.

Too cool, too dry

Spring sowings have been slow north of the border in Canada too, where the Canadian Wheat Board said that plantings on the key agricultural Prairies area, usually 4% completed by now, and 12% down a year ago, had yet to begin.

"Cool temperatures, 1-8 degrees below normal, continued to hinder snow melt and field drying over the past week," the board said, while highlighting a "positive factor" of little recent rain.

Meanwhile, northern wheat areas in China, the top producing country, dry weather looks like continuing to test winter-sown crops.

"None of the weather models show any sort of significant rain coming over the next seven days for any portion of Manchuria with the north China plains," David Tolleris at WxRisk.com said.

Rain for Europe?

However, prospects have improved for Russia, with warmer temperatures displacing the cold weather which has held back spring grains sowings to 40% below last year's levels.

And Mr Tolleris held out prospects of rain for dry northern Europe too.

"The weather models are showing that the block in the jet stream over north central Europe and lower Scandinavia will continue to move slowly west towards the UK and Iceland by day 9-10," Mr Tolleris said.

"This could allow for a more normal made it a spring weather pattern to develop and a return to seasonal rainfall for central and western Europe redeveloping sometime after May 6."

[davebowler] 18/4/2011 13:37

Sobering article;

[bobdouthwaite] 08/3/2011 09:08

From the NY Times.

Rain and Snowfall Ease Drought in China
By KEITH BRADSHER
Published: March 7, 2011

HONG KONG - Rain and snow during the past two weeks, together with a huge irrigation effort, appear to have saved much of the wheat crop in northern China from drought, Chinese and international agricultural and meteorological experts said Monday.

This winter was the driest in perhaps 200 years in parts of China, the world's largest wheat producer. That prompted alarm a month ago that China might need to sharply increase its usually modest wheat imports, at a time when world food prices were already surging. Supplies were tight after bad weather in other wheat-producing countries, including Russia and Australia.

But days of snow and rain across the heart of China's wheat belt in northern Henan and western Shandong Provinces have brought moisture to fields so dry that large cracks appeared in the dirt. The precipitation arrived at just the right moment, experts said, as vulnerable wheat planted last autumn was coming out of its winter dormancy and needed to grow or it would die.

"Things look better, definitely, and the government seems to be in control with irrigation and providing a lot of assistance to farmers," Kisan Gunjal, an official at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in Rome, said in a telephone interview on Monday. Mr. Gunjal is responsible for food shortfall alerts in Asia.

Chen Xiwen, the Chinese Communist Party's director of rural policy, said at a news conference in Beijing on Sunday that three rounds of precipitation and extra irrigation efforts had left less than a third of China's wheat acreage still suffering from drought.

Experts agreed that recent rain and snow had done much to relieve the drought. "The situation was rather tense when we did not have rain for over 50 days," said Tian Qi Zhu, a wheat specialist at Shandong Agricultural University in Tai'an, in western Shandong.

"However, with the two recent snowfalls, the drought situation is pretty much alleviated," Mr. Tian said Monday. "Except for some areas up in the hill region of Shandong, where there is still insufficient water, I would say the drought is under control."

A good wheat harvest could help China control inflation. Prime Minister Wen Jiabao said that price stability was a top priority for China this year.

Winter in China's wheat belt is usually fairly dry. But this winter was so dry that it provoked considerable concern, from government offices in Beijing to the grain markets of Chicago.

President Hu Jintao and Mr. Wen separately toured parched wheat fields during the Lunar New Year holidays and urged emergency irrigation and other efforts. The United Nations food agency issued a rare "special alert" on Feb. 8 warning of the drought's effects on the wheat crop and even on drinking water for people and livestock.

Wheat futures in Chicago, already high because of extreme heat in Russia last summer, surged even higher when the food agency issued its alert, jumping 2 percent in a day. On Monday, wheat futures edged down 31.5 cents, or 3.8 percent, after word spread of China's recent damp weather.

China has been planning to send more trade delegations to the United States this year to look for imports to help balance its enormous exports and persistent trade surpluses. But grain experts said that it would be hard to discern quickly whether China was buying more wheat from the United States.

Virtually all of the wheat grown in China is fairly low quality, which works fine for making noodles, an important food, particularly in northern China. China imports some high-grade wheat every year for use in bread and pastries, which are becoming increasingly popular in its cities. Chinese-grown wheat is almost never suitable for making croissants and other Western delicacies, agriculture experts said.

Hilda Wang contributed reporting.
A version of this article appeared in print on March 8, 2011, on page A4 of the New York edition.

[jmctaggart] 07/3/2011 14:26

lol, im krypto, gonna shut my face from now on...

[jmctaggart] 07/3/2011 14:09

should finish past 10, breakout from there?

[praipus] 02/3/2011 11:35

Can anyone explain the latest RNS? The word "redemption" caught my eye.

[bobdouthwaite] 23/2/2011 17:38

and one more..

17:01 UK, 23rd February 2011, by Agrimoney.com

Middle East orders ease grain market jitters



I hope we've found a floor.

[bobdouthwaite] 23/2/2011 17:35

Mart, looks like you're right...

Bloomberg
Wheat Collapsing as Protests Prompt Speculators to Desert Food
February 23, 2011, 10:39 AM EST

[bobdouthwaite] 23/2/2011 17:20

So perhaps this bit from the Agrimoney article is significant:

"Fundamentals will provide some clue, with Egypt to unveil the results of a wheat tender later, and many other buyers, such as Morocco and the United Arab Emirates, in the market, giving some potential support."

Ease prices to help regional tensions?

[mart] 23/2/2011 12:16

Depends how much pricing is really due to solely speculative interest I guess. Presumably the usual suspects have taken the Fed libations and stuffed them into anything handy which looks malleable.

Is it possible that TPTB think it might be 'advisable' to get food prices down a bit?

Otherwise, I'd go with 8.8-8.7

[bobdouthwaite] 23/2/2011 11:59

From Agrimoney.

"Morning markets: farm commodity selling loses pace - for now

Does oats know?

That's what many Chicago traders believe, that the grain something of a leading indicator for the complex. And certainly, when the rally kicked off last summer, oat futures were quick off the starting blocks.

If the grain is a leading indicator on the downside too, then a quieter start to the day in Chicago belies a miserable finish.

Mena and meaner

Indeed, while oats added a further 3.9% to their losses as of 08:00 GMT, taking them to $3.74 ½ a bushel, the Chicago majors were in better fettle, in line with somewhat greater stability on international markets.

Sure, oil prices gained a touch more on concerns about Libya, a crude producing and exporting country, and whether unrest there would spread elsewhere in "Mena", as the Middle East and North Africa belt is now known in financial circles.

But the gains were limited. New York crude added 0.4% to $95.84 a barrel.

And the round of share price losses slowed, leaving Hong Kong shares down 0.4% and Shanghai stocks up 0.3%.

The dollar fell back too, down 0.4%, as talk on currency markets moved back to Europe, and the chances of a rise in eurozone interest rates.

Acreage battle

That was enough to help Chicago soybeans back to positive territory, up 0.5% at $13.04 ½ a bushel for March delivery, getting some help from the acreage battle.

Soybeans are still below the 2.0 times corn prices seen as a trigger point in corn vs soybeans sowing decisions.

Indeed, the oilseed is seen coming out badly from the US Department of Agriculture's next, and more measured, estimates for US spring sowings, with an area below the 78.0m acres outlined last week.

Furthermore, US weekly export inspection data, overshadowed by yesterday's crop correction, was positive for soybeans, at nearly 41m bushels, up from less than 36m bushels the week before.

While South American countries have begun their harvest, and estimates for Brazil's crop were raised by two in-country analysts to 72.0m tonnes on Tuesday, supplies remain a while from hitting ports in earnest.

Limits expanded

Sure, the major grains recorded further losses. But, with corn down 0.7% at $6.74 ¾ a bushel for March and wheat off 0.5% at $7.58 ¼ a bushel for March, they weren't a patch on those of the last session.

And there is potential for considerably worse carnage, given the exchange has raised price trading limits, meaning corn, for instance, can tumble 45 cents, compared with the 30-cent maximum decline which it recorded on Tuesday.

Abroad, meanwhile, crops played a bit of catch up, with palm oil down 3.9% at $3,527 ringgit a tonne in Kuala Lumpur. In Sydney, the price of east coast Australian milling wheat tumbled 5.6% to Aus$317.50 a tonne.

Import orders

What are the chances of crops losing further ground?

Fundamentals will provide some clue, with Egypt to unveil the results of a wheat tender later, and many other buyers, such as Morocco and the United Arab Emirates, in the market, giving some potential support.

On the downside, rains are foreseen in drought-struck Chinese winter wheat regions this weekend, while India's farm minister, Sharad Pawar, has said that the country should be exporting wheat and rice, let alone sugar.

Goings on in Libya will, of course, be another big influence too.

The money flow factor

But how big?

"I am not entirely on board with the idea that turmoil in Libya was the only factor" in the last session's sell off, Brian Henry at Benson Quinn Commodities said,

"It may have been a catalyst, but the trade got caught long."

In fact, the shift more a matter of "money flow, as the investment community liquidated long positions.

"While very little has changed from the standpoint of fundamentals over the course of the last few days, the stance taken by the investment community has changed considerably," Mr Henry said.

"I can get on board with the idea that the inflation trade favours the energy market at this time."

Meanwhile, Mike Mawdsley at Market 1 noted "word on the floor [that] Goldman Sachs had to liquidate corn to rebalance its portfolio".

'Further liquidation

Will such selling continue?

In Singapore, Phillip Futures' Ker Chung Yang said that "despite the strong supply-and-demand fundamentals, we believe that turmoil and uncertainty in the Middle East and North Africa may prompt traders to cut long positions in the grain markets.

"We expect the speculators to further reduce exposure to risk assets. Consumers may wait for lower prices and political unrest in Mena to subside."

Even higher oil prices, this time, may not be enough to spare crops such as corn used as biofuels.

"Worries about the global economy may send investors fleeing from risk," Mr Ker said, forecasting prices will "come under pressure on worries about the Mena and widespread profit-taking".

Chart clues

As for technical pointers, well, here are some to look out for (besides oats).

For corn, the 20-day moving average mark is $6.78 a bushel for the March lot, breached this morning, but for how long? The 50-day moving average is at around $6.42 a bushel.

Meanwhile, "uptrend support is near $6.65 a bushel", Mr Mawdsley said.

In soybeans, the 38% retracement level, a key factor in Fibonacci analysis, is at $12.46 a bushel for the overall 2010-11 rally.

And in wheat, $7.74 a bushel is the 62% retracement for the rally since November."

Can anyone explain why food futures fall with political turmoil? Do people stop eating? Can farmers farm better? I don't get it.

[traderabc] 23/2/2011 11:05

I'm watching it with interest, how much lower do you think Mart? 8.8 ish? below that it breaks the (steep) trendline

[mart] 23/2/2011 10:58

Anybody clocking this?

[bobdouthwaite] 17/2/2011 10:23

From Agrimoney, to-day:

Analyst cuts EU grain hopes, as dryness fears grow

Strategie Grains has, for a second time, cut its forecast for the European Union grain harvest this year, even as worries mounted about dry weather in large swathe of the region.

The influential analysis group downgraded by 1.1m tonnes, to 289.8m tonnes, its forecast for the crop.

While still representing a 5.5% increase on last year's harvest, the downgrade, reflecting in part a trim to sowings estimates, leaves the harvest projection short of the historic highs reaped at the end of last decade.

Barley took the brunt of the downgrade, with the production estimate cut by 600,000 tonnes to 55.2m tonnes, thanks to reduced hopes for northern and western parts of the region.

The forecast for soft wheat was trimmed by some 100,000 tonnes to 135.5m tonnes.

'Dry conditions'

The revision comes amid growing concerns over prospects for crops emerging from winter dormancy after drier-than-usual winter weather across most of the region.

A belt from eastern Spain through south parts of France, the region's top producing country, into Eastern Europe received less than half the average rainfall between mid-December and mid-February, data from weather service MDA show.

Rainfall in central and north east England, as well as Wales, showed a similar shortfall.

"New concerns about dry conditions are rising in Europe, on a large area from the south eest regions of France to Poland," Agritel, the Paris-based consultancy, said on Thursday.

"This will require close monitoring in the coming weeks, even if the crops are not at threat for the moment."

Earlier in the week, FCStone analyst Jaime Nolan noted that "we are seeing dryness in south France and northern Italy" with "southern Europe seeming to require moisture".


Related Agrimoney articles

[jmctaggart] 14/2/2011 15:52

it would be silly not to have this in a portfolio right now. i was silly ;)

[davebowler] 04/2/2011 14:12

CED2 and AVT are other , geared ways of getting agri exposure.

[traderabc] 03/2/2011 16:12

Corn, Soybeans Advance to 30-Month Highs on Argentine Strike

Corn and soybeans rose to 30-month highs in Chicago as a strike by port workers in Argentina disrupted crop shipments. Rice climbed to the highest price in 13 months.

Argentine port workers, who have been on strike since last week, are blocking between 20 and 30 soybean- and grain-hauling ships from the country's main terminals, Alberto Jacobson, head of the San Lorenzo Chamber of Commerce, said yesterday.