The Morning Vibe

Posted by Nogger - a legend in his own mind at 10:14 | Categorized as

06/03/12 -- For once this isn't far off what it looks like here in North Yorkshire this morning. We had a frost overnight with temps falling to -5C Mrs N#3 tells me without disclosing where she acquired this information. The car says it's 1C out there now although it feels warmer than that in the sunshine.

So, I pop out to walk the dog and get myself a bacon butty and the overnight wheat market is 3 cents or so down, I return to find it 10-11 cents weaker. London wheat has opened GBP1.50-1.80/tonne lower, with Paris wheat down EUR2-3.00/tonne. So what's happened between 9-10am?

The dollar is a bit firmer and crude a touch weaker, some are saying that it's Chinese growth that's the worry. I'm sure it said on the BBC news last night that growth of 7.5% would be the lowest since the 1990's, not 2004 as most of the popular newswires are saying.

It seems odd that the market is down today on something that was known yesterday morning though.

It seems more likely that we are back on the Greek jitters track with just two days to go to the deadline for private investors to agree to take a 53.5% debt haircut. If they don't agree then Italy and Spain could be dragged into the smelly stuff rather quickly.

In other news, my Dutch mate Lourens emails me with the following info from his contact in Bell Ville, 200 km west of Rosario, the region most severely hit by the summer drought.

"We finished the maize harvest we started 1 February. (more or less 1500 hectares; LG). It was a very bad harvest with just 3.700-5.000 kilo/ha. (normal average 7.500; LG).

"We had the last rains on 28 November and after that the first rains came 20 February. It was never seen before in our region. Since 20 February until now we have 230 mm rains. Maize harvest is bad in all of prv Cordoba. The North of Buenos Aires, prv Santa Fe, and Prv Chaco are somewhat better, but in general rains came too late.

"We now started soy harvest with only 700-1400 kilo/ha (normal is double). Very bad indeed."

That doesn't sound too great does it, even allowing for the fact that this is at the heart of the drought area.

Elsewhere Bangladesh are said to be looking to do an intergovernmental deal with Ukraine for 100,000 MT of wheat.