EU Grains Rise Despite USDA Forecast For Record Wheat, Corn And Rapeseed Crops
11/11/14 -- EU grains were mostly a little higher, as traders went through the minutiae of last night's USDA report. Although the Paris grain markets were open, many traders there were absent for the Remembrance Day holiday, so trade was light.
At the close Nov 14 London wheat was up GBP0.90/tonne at GBP119.30/tonne, Jan 15 Paris wheat finished EUR0.75/tonne firmer at EUR171.00/tonne, Jan 15 corn was EUR1.00/tonne higher at EUR149.50/tonne and Feb 15 rapeseed ended up EUR5.25/tonne to EUR340.25/tonne.
From a European perspective, the USDA reported record 2014 production for wheat, corn and rapeseed.
The EU wheat crop was pegged at 154.1 MMT, up 1.4 MMT from a month ago and an increase of 8.6% on last year.
"The month-to-month increases were based on recent harvest data with the largest being a 0.6 MMT increase for Poland. Production for Poland is estimated at a record 11.2 MMT, 18 percent higher than last year’s crop and 20 percent above the 5-year average.
"Record output is also estimated for Romania’s wheat at 8.1 MMT, Bulgaria at 4.9 MMT, the Czech Republic at 5.4 MMT, Finland at 1.0 MMT, Germany at 27.7 MMT, and Sweden at 2.9 MMT. France, the largest wheat producer in the EU, did not harvest a record crop at 39.1 MMT, but produced its largest crop since 2004/05," they said.
EU 2014/15 corn production was estimated at a record 73.1 MMT, up 2.0 MMT or 2.9 percent from last month, and up 8.9 MMT or 14 percent from last year.
"Corn yield has benefitted greatly from above-average rainfall that has dominated European weather every month since June. Continued damp conditions in southeast Europe, including Romania, Bulgaria, and Hungary, have hampered harvest operations. In these areas, if the weather continues to delay harvesting, farmers will continue harvesting into the winter," they suggested.
EU rapeseed production for 2014/15 was estimated at a record 24.0 MMT, up 0.5 MMT or 2 percent from last month, and up 14 percent from last year.
On a UK specific level, the USDA estimated the wheat crop at 16.6 MMT, unchanged from last month but almost 40% up on a year ago. They added 0.5 MMT to their UK barley production estimate from a month ago, taking the crop up to 7.0 MMT. That's a 1.3% fall on output a year ago, but not a bad result considering that plantings were reduced by 10.7% this year. They trimmed their forecast for the UK OSR crop from 2.57 MMT to 2.48 MMT, which still represents a 16.6% increase on a year ago. That cut came largely thanks to a reduction in the harvested area from the 720k ha predicted a month ago to 680k ha this time round.
The USDA had the French corn crop at a record 17 MMT, which is almost exactly the same as the French Farm Ministry said yesterday (16.95 MMT), a 15% rise on 12 months ago.
Morocco are tendering for 171,600 MT of wheat on the local market. Israel bought 120,000 MT of optional origin, but probably Black Sea, corn in a tender.
Russia's Ag Ministry said that it's 2014 grain harvest had now produced 108.9 MMT in bunker weight off almost 97% of the planned area. Wheat accounts for 61.7 MMT of that, with barley adding another 21.1 MMT and corn a further 10.2 MMT. The corn harvest is 85.5% complete, they said.
Ukraine said that they'd exported 13 MMT of grains so far this season, including 6.86 MMT of wheat, 3.28 MMT of barley and 2.72 MMT of corn.