Market Bites

The Chinese government sold just 2,000 MT of the 500,000 MT of soybeans offered for sale at it's regular weekly auction today.

Tomorrow is the start of an eight day national holiday in China, so we can potentially anticipate a quiet period next week with little impetus from the Far East.

Wet weather rather than frost seems to be emerging as the main problem for the US Midwest in the week ahead. For Thursday a vigorous storm moves into Iowa giving heavy rain from North Dakota to Illinois and severe weather in the Ozarks and lower Mississippi Valley, say QT Weather. This storm will bring another shot of “frosty air” to the Northern Plains and WCB late this week and over the weekend, they say.

Another storm on the radar for Sunday is also expected to bring with it another round of Corn Belt rains, severe weather and freezing temperatures, they add.

That will potentially frustrate farmers trying to wrap up the last of the spring wheat harvest and those itching to get cracking with corn and beans. Not good news, particularly for a corn crop maturing at around its slowest pace in over twenty years.

Australian Crop Forecasters (ACF) have revised down their 2009/10 Australian wheat production estimate from 23.5 MMT to 22.0 MMT.

The Renewable Fuels Agency reports that 176,000 MT of biodiesel was used in the UK between April 15 and June 14, 2009, which is slightly up from the 171,000 MT used in the same period of last year.

First Milk, Britain's largest dairy farmer co-operative, have reported an after-tax loss of GBP7.1 million for the year ended March 31. Group turnover fell during the period by 3% to GBP582 million.