Snippets

A hastily convened meeting with a high court judge on Friday has Brazil's top grain port of Paranagua back open for business. The port had been closed Thursday on the orders of Brazil's environment agency.

European grains have started the week on a firmer footing, with front month London wheat opening up GBP0.75/tonne, and November Paris wheat up EUR1.50/tonne. Paris corn is around EUR2-2.50/tonne higher and Paris rapeseed up EUR1.50-3.00/tonne.

NYSE Liffe have announced that daily volumes in Paris milling wheat reached record levels last week. Legitimate hedging or rampant fund speculation?

Thailand, the second largest sugar exporter in the world, is tendering to buy 100,000 MT of the white stuff to bolster domestic shortages.

North eastern Saskatchewan picked up an extra 18 to 70 mm of precipitation on already-saturated fields in the period June 29 to July 5, according to Saskatchewan Agriculture's latest weekly Crop Report. Cropland topsoil moisture here is rated as 90 per cent surplus and 10 per cent adequate.

The poor old Baltic Cry Index was down again Friday, for seemingly the four millionth session in a row, closing at 1902 for a spectacular 55% decline since late May.

This year's Bulgarian harvest could be a disaster, according to the National Association of Grain Producers. Incessant rains mean that wheat quality and yields have been badly hit, they say. This could be a repeat of the terrible harvest of 1997, when quality was so bad farmers struggled to find any buying interest at all for their largely uninsured crops, they add.

Things aren't so bad in the Czech Republic, where the Czech Statistical Office say that this season's grain harvest will be only 5 percent lower than last season at 6.58 MMT. Winter wheat will be 1.3 percent down, accounting for 4.17 MMT of that, with the spring barley harvest pegged at 1.19 MMT, a drop of more than 12 percent on the year. This season's rapeseed harvest could produce 1.143 MMT, which would marginally beat last season's record crop by 1.4 percent, they say. The country will also harvest 203,000 MT of spring wheat and 515,000 MT of winter barley, they add.