European market
The financial markets remain in turmoil, and yesterday night the European Central Bank (ECB) injected 750 billion dollars through the purchase of securities, an unprecedented amount, illustrating the scale of the crisis. The euro is, however, only slightly up at 1.0930 against the dollar. Crude oil meanwhile rose a little after yesterday's plunge to 23.10 $/barrel in New York. Note that the Asian stock markets fell again this morning.
Freight transport is experiencing disruptions due to a lack of drivers, particularly in trains. This leads to supply difficulties in certain factories, not affected by a lack of manpower. In this context, wheat prices for close deliveries rose sharply, thanks to good international demand. In particular, China is purchasing.
On the international scene, the purchase by South Korea of 60,000 t of corn of optional origins should be noted. Algeria also bought 400,000 t of durum wheat, optional origins. This could probably be from Mexico or Canada.
The return of drier weather in France and Europe allows a significant advance in spring barley planting, leading to a drop in prices for malting barley 2020, all the more since beer consumption is in sharp decline.
Corn remains in a shared situation due to the fall in biofuels across the Atlantic. As for rapeseed, the prices changed little yesterday, consolidating its positions after the sharp decline in recent weeks.
American market
Yesterday in Chicago, there was a contrasting situation between rising wheat prices and declining corn prices.
Corn is penalized by the drop in ethanol prices, knowing that almost 39% of US corn volumes go in this sector.
Conversely, wheat remains firm with good international demand.
Soybeans are mixed up, with a demand that remains strong in the animal sector to replace the drop in feed corn supply. On the other hand, the downturn in the veg oil market penalizes the biodiesel sector.
The funds were net sellers yesterday for 33,000 lots of corn and net buyers for 1,000 lots of soybeans and 7,500 lots of wheat.
Black Sea market
In Ukraine as in Russia, the agronomic services still do not share data on the progress of the spring works. Proof of the precocity of this spring 2020, is the start of the sunflower sowings, what our partners report from southern Russia, Romania, and for almost a week now in Ukraine.
By the end of the week, temperatures will remain above the seasonal norms but no rain is expected. No doubt the seedlings will continue to progress at a great speed. Under these conditions, it can be estimated that by the end of the week, more than half of the spring barley in Ukraine will have been sown as well as almost all of the spring wheat.
All the producers continue to express their concerns regarding the still low water reserves at the start of the season. In the face of this situation, some of them even reconsider, at the last minute, their 2020 rotation.
