Market Commentary: Acreage Outlooks Weaken Corn, Soy; Wheat Gains on Firmer Russian Offers
Trade at the CBOT was mostly lower heading into Thursday’s Grain Stocks and Prospective Plantings reports from the USDA, but wheat futures managed to find midday support and settle higher. Wheat’s strength came from another week of cautious gains in Russian FOB offers, which is seen...
BRICS Grain Exchange; EU Policy Foibles; Yen Implosion
BRICS Grain Exchange Russia is reportedly pushing other BRICS members to use the bloc as a grain exchange in competition with the West. The assertion is that these countries already control 42 percent of the grain trade. Add the new members like Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran and the UAE, plus other...
Duck Data
The USDA attache’s office in New Delhi reports that India issued revised import rules last month for premium duck meat. The tariff was reduced from 30 percent to 5 percent, and standards were announced for selling the meat to at least three-star hotels and restaurants approved by the gove...
Black Sea Regional Analysis
Russian Grain Markets: 18–22 March 2024 The Russian domestic grain market saw depreciation of milling wheat and a slight depreciation of feed wheat, while feed corn also started to appreciate - most probably because of softer export duties. For the upcoming week, exports of feed corn from...
FOB Prices and Freight Rate App (Updated 27 March)
Ocean Freight Comments - 22 March 2024 By Matt Herrington The Baltic Dry Indexes strengthened earlier this week, but those gains faded by Thursday afternoon and markets turned mixed for the week. Capesize markets continue to struggle as they wait for Chinese demand to increase while Panamax and...
Interactive Ocean Freight Rates (Updated 27 March)
Ocean Freight Comments - 22 March 2024 By Matt Herrington The Baltic Dry Indexes strengthened earlier this week, but those gains faded by Thursday afternoon and markets turned mixed for the week. Capesize markets continue to struggle as they wait for Chinese demand to increase while Panamax and...
Market Commentary: CBOT Sinks on Risk-Off Trade; Cattle Futures Crash on HPAI Discovery
Reactions to news headlines dominated Tuesday’s commodity trade with markets selling off in defensive, risk-off price action. As is discussed in more detail below and in nearby pages, bearish news hit the markets from the overnight collapse of a bridge in Baltimore, Maryland that closed t...
Factless Nostalgia; Cash is King
Factless Nostalgia There is yet another crusader against the modern agrifood system. This time it is Austin Frerick, who claims authenticity due to his Iowa roots but he is just another Ivy League university (Yale) pontificator hollering from the ivory tower. His book, “Barons,” com...
The Next Bull is a Cow
The market reacted bearishly to reports of HPAI in dairy cows in Texas and Kansas, implying concerns about a demand shock. USDA advised there is no risk to human health and the animals are recovering. Nonetheless, feeder cattle futures dropped $3-5 and live cattle prices dropped over $2/cwt. Cl...
HPAI Spreads to Mammals; Detected on Dairy Farms
Yesterday, there were two reports made public of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) detections in livestock. First, kid goats in Minnesota, who were in what was a former backyard poultry operation depopulated due to HPAI. That set of circumstances created a situation where there was a hig...
February Cold Storage
The February Cold Storage report’s numbers reflect a significant drawdown in red meat and poultry stocks compared to one year ago. Total red meat and poultry inventories were down nearly 9 percent year-over-year, despite higher slaughter and meat production numbers for the month. The repo...
Middle East, Mediterranean and Africa Regional Analysis
Regional Updates MEDITERRANEAN/MIDDLE EAST/NORTH AFRICA/AFRICA – MEA REGION Egypt’s Prime minister says that the prices of essential goods will drop by 15 to 20 percent in coming days. He added that $4.5 billion of goods delayed in ports due to unavailable foreign exchange will now...
Market Commentary: Soy Complex Leads CBOT with Vegoil Rally
The biggest moves in ag commodity futures are in the vegoil markets right now, with stronger Malaysian palm oil exports and drought threats pushing values higher. Last week, Malaysian palm oil scored new contract highs and helped CBOT soyoil rally, and similar trends developed in Monday’s...
Revising Down the Economy
We’ve now had a couple of months in 2024 where economic report revisions have come in, and they have been significant. This has changed the outlook on the economy from bullish during the last part of 2023 and January, to now being more uncertain. First, the February payroll report s...
European Market Analysis
Regional News Russia’s grain stocks at the end of February totaled 28 MMT, down 2.7 percent compared to the prior year. Wheat stocks of 17.5 MMT were up 1.1 percent from February 2023 while corn stocks fell 10 percent over that period to 2.9 MMT. Oilseed stocks totaled 4 MMT (up 5 p...
Mercosur Regional Analysis
Corn The Buenos Aires Grain Exchange lowered its forecast of Argentina’s corn harvest estimate by 2.5 MMT down to 54 MMT last week. The main reasons are the February heatwave (which affected the mid- and late-season corn), excessive rainfall, and inclement weather that caused yield losses...
CFTC COT Report Analysis
The attached PDF offers graphical depiction and seasonal analysis of managed money and commercial traders' net position in key agricultural commodity markets. The data is, of course, taken from the CFTC's weekly Commitment of Traders report, using the futures only data. WPI recently completed a...
Market Commentary: Wheat Gains on EU Tariffs; Soy, Corn Drift Lower Before Stocks, Acres Reports
The wheat market was the surprising upside leader for the day with Matif Paris futures posting large gains after sources said the EU Commission is considering applying a €95/MT tariff on Russian wheat imports. That strength spilled over into the U.S. markets, though U.S. wheat exports are...
Oilseed Highlights: Resistance Holds as Soybeans Bounce off the Ceiling
The Market The market has been squeezed between lower export demand but rising palm oil prices, with the latter pushing soybean prices to the highest in over a month. Rapeseed futures have risen to a four-month high. Canola added 0.5 percent this week and Dalian soybeans added 2 percent. Howeve...
Fixing the WTO; The Winner is Ag
Fixing the WTO The 13th Ministerial Conference last month in Abu Dhabi was yet another failure by the WTO. Now Singapore has proposed a retreat to discuss fundamental fixes needed to stop the long string of failures. Ultimately, the structural problems of the WTO involve one country, one vote a...
Cattle on Feed Report: Record February Placements
USDA released the monthly Cattle on Feed report today. As has been the case more often than not since mid-2023, actual placements have exceeded the pre-report estimates. Coming into today’s report the consensus estimate among analysts was for placements to be 106 percent of last ye...
Market Commentary: Bullish Outside Markets and a Spring Rally
Although it didn’t start out that way, today’s trading ended mostly in the green for grains and soybeans despite continued weak fundamentals and large net shorts positions by speculators. For the trading week, May corn is now up 4 cents, May soybeans have gained 13.75 cents, and May...
Livestock Roundup: Cattle on Feed Preview
USDA will release its Cattle on Feed report tomorrow; the consensus pre-report analysts’ estimate is for the inventory of cattle on feed to be 101 percent of the prior year. This would be the sixth consecutive month that inventories were equal to or larger than the previous year. Prior to...
Fake Meat Fight; Transatlantic Mutuality; Biofuel Instead of Food
Fake Meat Fight Some western state U.S. Senate Democrats are in tough reelection positions and need to show their distance from President Biden. Following SPS protocols, President Biden recently approved imports of beef from Paraguay. Today the Senate passed a resolution overturning the Preside...
Market Commentary: Soy Complex Rallies on Vegoil Strength; Record Cow-Calf Profits Forecast for 2024
The CBOT largely reversed the trends of the prior two days as wheat futures pulled back while the soy complex jumped to sharp gains and the corn market saw quiet strength. The soy complex is reacting to growing strength in broader vegoil markets, especially Malaysian palm oil, and that fundamen...
Policy Shorts
India Paradox: A new report using the Modified Mixed Recall Period shows that over the past decade, India matched China’s success in the decade before in eliminating extreme poverty. It has not experienced the same growth in GDP, but its programs and policies made progress. At the same ti...
Black Sea Regional Analysis
Russian Grain Markets: 11–15 March 2024 Russian grain markets remained slightly bullish in the south and Volga valley. However, export prices did not react immediately despite a decreased export duty and weaker RUB. In fact, a weaker RUB is better for Russian grain exports which are at hi...
Market Commentary: Wheat Gains Continue while Corn, Soy Slide Sideways
The CBOT was mostly sideways on Tuesday with traders consolidating positions ahead of next week’s Grain Stocks and Planting Intentions reports. Fresh fundamental news was light, which left corn and the soy complex to drift sideways/lower while wheat futures pushed higher with support comi...
Trade Negotiation Calculation; UTP = You and Me; Real and Imagined
Trade Negotiation Calculation The WTO’s dispute settlement system and new multilateral trade negotiations fail from the perspective of Donald Trump and now Joe Biden because they put all parties on equal footing. This means the U.S. loses its asymmetric advantage of being an economic and...
We All Scream
President Joe Biden is “bad talking” about the food industry, accusing it of greed for raising prices. While his focus was on “chips” and shrinkflation, he could also have talked about his favorite food, ice cream. After all, his generation – those over age 75, are...
President’s FY 2025 Budget Request for USDA
While Congress is finishing the last six appropriations bills for FY 2024 (with a deadline of this Friday), President Biden submitted his FY 2025 budget proposal last week with few changes proposed to USDA’s budget. Overall, USDA spending under the President’s request i...
Middle East, Mediterranean and Africa Regional Analysis
Regional Updates MEDITERRANEAN/MIDDLE EAST/NORTH AFRICA/AFRICA – MEA REGION Grain information and activity in the MEA region was reduced greatly this past week as it was the first week of Ramadan with reduced working hours for businesses, banks and government offices. Pakistan...
Market Commentary: Corn, Soy Complex Pause Rallies while Technical Buying Lifts Wheat
When markets opened on Monday there were just nine trading sessions before the quarterly Grain Stocks and Acreage Intentions reports from USDA, which meant that traders were focused on adjusting positions and forecasts ahead of those numbers. Beyond that, the weather is the market’s prima...
Monetary Policy Between a Rock and a Hard Place
The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) will meet this week; interest rates were last raised in July 2023, and during Q4 when rates were held steady markets were hopeful that was a signal that a rate cut would be coming in 2024. Right now, however, the Federal Funds Futures market...
Cahiers Redux – Politicians Recoil
The Cahiers de doléances [or kaje for short] were the pre-French revolution (1789) lists of societal complaints. The collective disappointments of the clergy, the nobility, and the rest of society too. Nothing has changed. Documents of the time cite the criticisms as: government waste, i...
Brazil’s Meat Opportunity
Brazil has famously surpassed the U.S. as the world’s largest producer and exporter of soybeans, and it could become a more consistent top exporter of corn. However, its livestock production lags. Brazil’s soybean production has been expanding at an average 5.5 percent per year, and...
Market Commentary: Acreage Outlooks Weaken Corn, Soy; Wheat Gains on Firmer Russian Offers
Trade at the CBOT was mostly lower heading into Thursday’s Grain Stocks and Prospective Plantings reports from the USDA, but wheat futures managed to find midday support and settle higher. Wheat’s strength came from another week of cautious gains in Russian FOB offers, which is seen...
BRICS Grain Exchange; EU Policy Foibles; Yen Implosion
BRICS Grain Exchange Russia is reportedly pushing other BRICS members to use the bloc as a grain exchange in competition with the West. The assertion is that these countries already control 42 percent of the grain trade. Add the new members like Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran and the UAE, plus other...
Duck Data
The USDA attache’s office in New Delhi reports that India issued revised import rules last month for premium duck meat. The tariff was reduced from 30 percent to 5 percent, and standards were announced for selling the meat to at least three-star hotels and restaurants approved by the gove...
Black Sea Regional Analysis
Russian Grain Markets: 18–22 March 2024 The Russian domestic grain market saw depreciation of milling wheat and a slight depreciation of feed wheat, while feed corn also started to appreciate - most probably because of softer export duties. For the upcoming week, exports of feed corn from...
FOB Prices and Freight Rate App (Updated 27 March)
Ocean Freight Comments - 22 March 2024 By Matt Herrington The Baltic Dry Indexes strengthened earlier this week, but those gains faded by Thursday afternoon and markets turned mixed for the week. Capesize markets continue to struggle as they wait for Chinese demand to increase while Panamax and...
Interactive Ocean Freight Rates (Updated 27 March)
Ocean Freight Comments - 22 March 2024 By Matt Herrington The Baltic Dry Indexes strengthened earlier this week, but those gains faded by Thursday afternoon and markets turned mixed for the week. Capesize markets continue to struggle as they wait for Chinese demand to increase while Panamax and...
Market Commentary: CBOT Sinks on Risk-Off Trade; Cattle Futures Crash on HPAI Discovery
Reactions to news headlines dominated Tuesday’s commodity trade with markets selling off in defensive, risk-off price action. As is discussed in more detail below and in nearby pages, bearish news hit the markets from the overnight collapse of a bridge in Baltimore, Maryland that closed t...
Factless Nostalgia; Cash is King
Factless Nostalgia There is yet another crusader against the modern agrifood system. This time it is Austin Frerick, who claims authenticity due to his Iowa roots but he is just another Ivy League university (Yale) pontificator hollering from the ivory tower. His book, “Barons,” com...
The Next Bull is a Cow
The market reacted bearishly to reports of HPAI in dairy cows in Texas and Kansas, implying concerns about a demand shock. USDA advised there is no risk to human health and the animals are recovering. Nonetheless, feeder cattle futures dropped $3-5 and live cattle prices dropped over $2/cwt. Cl...
HPAI Spreads to Mammals; Detected on Dairy Farms
Yesterday, there were two reports made public of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) detections in livestock. First, kid goats in Minnesota, who were in what was a former backyard poultry operation depopulated due to HPAI. That set of circumstances created a situation where there was a hig...
February Cold Storage
The February Cold Storage report’s numbers reflect a significant drawdown in red meat and poultry stocks compared to one year ago. Total red meat and poultry inventories were down nearly 9 percent year-over-year, despite higher slaughter and meat production numbers for the month. The repo...
Middle East, Mediterranean and Africa Regional Analysis
Regional Updates MEDITERRANEAN/MIDDLE EAST/NORTH AFRICA/AFRICA – MEA REGION Egypt’s Prime minister says that the prices of essential goods will drop by 15 to 20 percent in coming days. He added that $4.5 billion of goods delayed in ports due to unavailable foreign exchange will now...
Market Commentary: Soy Complex Leads CBOT with Vegoil Rally
The biggest moves in ag commodity futures are in the vegoil markets right now, with stronger Malaysian palm oil exports and drought threats pushing values higher. Last week, Malaysian palm oil scored new contract highs and helped CBOT soyoil rally, and similar trends developed in Monday’s...
Revising Down the Economy
We’ve now had a couple of months in 2024 where economic report revisions have come in, and they have been significant. This has changed the outlook on the economy from bullish during the last part of 2023 and January, to now being more uncertain. First, the February payroll report s...
European Market Analysis
Regional News Russia’s grain stocks at the end of February totaled 28 MMT, down 2.7 percent compared to the prior year. Wheat stocks of 17.5 MMT were up 1.1 percent from February 2023 while corn stocks fell 10 percent over that period to 2.9 MMT. Oilseed stocks totaled 4 MMT (up 5 p...
Mercosur Regional Analysis
Corn The Buenos Aires Grain Exchange lowered its forecast of Argentina’s corn harvest estimate by 2.5 MMT down to 54 MMT last week. The main reasons are the February heatwave (which affected the mid- and late-season corn), excessive rainfall, and inclement weather that caused yield losses...
CFTC COT Report Analysis
The attached PDF offers graphical depiction and seasonal analysis of managed money and commercial traders' net position in key agricultural commodity markets. The data is, of course, taken from the CFTC's weekly Commitment of Traders report, using the futures only data. WPI recently completed a...
Market Commentary: Wheat Gains on EU Tariffs; Soy, Corn Drift Lower Before Stocks, Acres Reports
The wheat market was the surprising upside leader for the day with Matif Paris futures posting large gains after sources said the EU Commission is considering applying a €95/MT tariff on Russian wheat imports. That strength spilled over into the U.S. markets, though U.S. wheat exports are...
Oilseed Highlights: Resistance Holds as Soybeans Bounce off the Ceiling
The Market The market has been squeezed between lower export demand but rising palm oil prices, with the latter pushing soybean prices to the highest in over a month. Rapeseed futures have risen to a four-month high. Canola added 0.5 percent this week and Dalian soybeans added 2 percent. Howeve...
Fixing the WTO; The Winner is Ag
Fixing the WTO The 13th Ministerial Conference last month in Abu Dhabi was yet another failure by the WTO. Now Singapore has proposed a retreat to discuss fundamental fixes needed to stop the long string of failures. Ultimately, the structural problems of the WTO involve one country, one vote a...
Cattle on Feed Report: Record February Placements
USDA released the monthly Cattle on Feed report today. As has been the case more often than not since mid-2023, actual placements have exceeded the pre-report estimates. Coming into today’s report the consensus estimate among analysts was for placements to be 106 percent of last ye...
Market Commentary: Bullish Outside Markets and a Spring Rally
Although it didn’t start out that way, today’s trading ended mostly in the green for grains and soybeans despite continued weak fundamentals and large net shorts positions by speculators. For the trading week, May corn is now up 4 cents, May soybeans have gained 13.75 cents, and May...
Livestock Roundup: Cattle on Feed Preview
USDA will release its Cattle on Feed report tomorrow; the consensus pre-report analysts’ estimate is for the inventory of cattle on feed to be 101 percent of the prior year. This would be the sixth consecutive month that inventories were equal to or larger than the previous year. Prior to...
Fake Meat Fight; Transatlantic Mutuality; Biofuel Instead of Food
Fake Meat Fight Some western state U.S. Senate Democrats are in tough reelection positions and need to show their distance from President Biden. Following SPS protocols, President Biden recently approved imports of beef from Paraguay. Today the Senate passed a resolution overturning the Preside...
Market Commentary: Soy Complex Rallies on Vegoil Strength; Record Cow-Calf Profits Forecast for 2024
The CBOT largely reversed the trends of the prior two days as wheat futures pulled back while the soy complex jumped to sharp gains and the corn market saw quiet strength. The soy complex is reacting to growing strength in broader vegoil markets, especially Malaysian palm oil, and that fundamen...
Policy Shorts
India Paradox: A new report using the Modified Mixed Recall Period shows that over the past decade, India matched China’s success in the decade before in eliminating extreme poverty. It has not experienced the same growth in GDP, but its programs and policies made progress. At the same ti...
Black Sea Regional Analysis
Russian Grain Markets: 11–15 March 2024 Russian grain markets remained slightly bullish in the south and Volga valley. However, export prices did not react immediately despite a decreased export duty and weaker RUB. In fact, a weaker RUB is better for Russian grain exports which are at hi...
Market Commentary: Wheat Gains Continue while Corn, Soy Slide Sideways
The CBOT was mostly sideways on Tuesday with traders consolidating positions ahead of next week’s Grain Stocks and Planting Intentions reports. Fresh fundamental news was light, which left corn and the soy complex to drift sideways/lower while wheat futures pushed higher with support comi...
Trade Negotiation Calculation; UTP = You and Me; Real and Imagined
Trade Negotiation Calculation The WTO’s dispute settlement system and new multilateral trade negotiations fail from the perspective of Donald Trump and now Joe Biden because they put all parties on equal footing. This means the U.S. loses its asymmetric advantage of being an economic and...
We All Scream
President Joe Biden is “bad talking” about the food industry, accusing it of greed for raising prices. While his focus was on “chips” and shrinkflation, he could also have talked about his favorite food, ice cream. After all, his generation – those over age 75, are...
President’s FY 2025 Budget Request for USDA
While Congress is finishing the last six appropriations bills for FY 2024 (with a deadline of this Friday), President Biden submitted his FY 2025 budget proposal last week with few changes proposed to USDA’s budget. Overall, USDA spending under the President’s request i...
Middle East, Mediterranean and Africa Regional Analysis
Regional Updates MEDITERRANEAN/MIDDLE EAST/NORTH AFRICA/AFRICA – MEA REGION Grain information and activity in the MEA region was reduced greatly this past week as it was the first week of Ramadan with reduced working hours for businesses, banks and government offices. Pakistan...
Market Commentary: Corn, Soy Complex Pause Rallies while Technical Buying Lifts Wheat
When markets opened on Monday there were just nine trading sessions before the quarterly Grain Stocks and Acreage Intentions reports from USDA, which meant that traders were focused on adjusting positions and forecasts ahead of those numbers. Beyond that, the weather is the market’s prima...
Monetary Policy Between a Rock and a Hard Place
The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) will meet this week; interest rates were last raised in July 2023, and during Q4 when rates were held steady markets were hopeful that was a signal that a rate cut would be coming in 2024. Right now, however, the Federal Funds Futures market...
Cahiers Redux – Politicians Recoil
The Cahiers de doléances [or kaje for short] were the pre-French revolution (1789) lists of societal complaints. The collective disappointments of the clergy, the nobility, and the rest of society too. Nothing has changed. Documents of the time cite the criticisms as: government waste, i...
Brazil’s Meat Opportunity
Brazil has famously surpassed the U.S. as the world’s largest producer and exporter of soybeans, and it could become a more consistent top exporter of corn. However, its livestock production lags. Brazil’s soybean production has been expanding at an average 5.5 percent per year, and...