• Interestingly we have seen a down day in Chicago today with wheat pacing the decline on “technical weakness”. The May ’15 contract traded easily below its 50 day moving average and its cousin, corn, failed to find support at its 100 day moving average. An increasingly wetter weather pattern is forecast to the far northern and far southern US Plains into the crucial (from a crop development perspective) early April period, and maybe more importantly the lingering dry conditions across Europe and Black Sea regions appears to be disappearing and possibly eliminated by mid-April.

• The USDA has today released its weekly export figures as detailed below, wheat sales in particular were disappointing:

Wheat: 181,700 mt, which is below estimates of 200,000-400,000 mt.
Corn: 464,000 mt, which is within estimates of 400,000-600,000 mt.
Soybeans: 726,000 mt, which is above estimates of 100,000-300,000 mt.
Soybean Meal: 228,200 mt, which is above estimates of 50,000-150,000 mt.
Soybean Oil: 22,400 mt which is above estimates of zero-20,000 mt.

• For their respective marketing years to date, the US has sold 1,456 million bu of corn, down 8% from last year; 1,781 million bu of soybeans, up 9% from last year and 99% of the USDA’s 14/15 forecast; and 836 million bu of wheat, down 24% from last year. Just 10 weeks are left in wheat’s marketing year, and an average weekly pace of 7 million bu is needed to meet the USDA’s target, which may well be a tall order given current lack of competitiveness.

• Brussels issued a further big week of wheat export certificates totalling 780,993 mt, which brings the season total to 25,836,202 mt. This is 1.87 million mt (7.8%) ahead of last year’s record pace.This week’s exports are marginally behind last week but still represent a significant volume. Stratégie Grains have left their season total unchanged at 30 million mt, which is 1.5 million mt behind the USDA’s February estimate. It seems there is still no shortage of EU (or Russian for that matter) wheat available for export sales.

• It should be noted that wheat sales have been made to Algeria and Korea at prices that calculate back to a discount when compared with replacement. Clearly our above point regarding wheat availability holds water!

• The International Grains Council (IGC) has released its latest update in which it has forecast a reduction in the 2015/16 global grain crop to 709 million mt, 10 million mt below 2014/15. In addition they reduced 2015/16 global corn production sharply year on year by 49 million mt to 941 million mt. Yield reduction from current year bumper levels was cited as the key driver for the reduction in corn output, and the lower volume is expected to result in a reduction in corn fed to livestock, which would offset the “hit” to end stocks.

• Coceral have reduced the EU soft wheat crop for 2015 to 138.6 million mt, which is a 9.7 million mt reduction year on year. They also reduced barley output by1.8 million mt to 58.4 million mt, corn was seen 7.8 million mt lower at 66 million mt and finally rapeseed was estimated at 200,000 mt lower at 21.6 million mt. Clearly their view was that 2014 was a bumper crop unlikely to be repeated for a second year in a row.