International

Markets have a lot of variables to deal with. Argentine weather has been the main concern and the market has basically been trading its 12-day forecast. However, Argentina’s soybean crop has time to wait for rain.

USDA’s WASDE report will be released overnight, as will estimates of winter-wheat seedings, which is probably where the biggest surprise could come from. The average trade guess for winter-wheat area is 13.9 million hectares (Mha); in the past three years, the winter-wheat planted area has been 12.7Mha, 12.3Mha and 12.9Mha.  While last year saw a 5-per-cent  increase in area, it was still the fourth-lowest US area on record.

A few tenders are ticking away, with Algeria calling for 50,000t of wheat, Japan looking for 108,000t of milling wheat and Turkey looking for 335,000t of milling wheat

Australia

There are still 8435 lots of ASX January 2022 wheat open, with the last trading day January 20. Even though we are in the delivery window, there is only 60t registered, and ASX has quietly added A$18/t since the recent lows posted January 6.

In cash markets, local wheat bids were relatively unchanged throughout eastern states depots yesterday, while the market was a touch firmer in Western Australia, with APW wheat trading around $368/t free in store Kwinana.  Barley firmed a fraction also over the course of the day, with some prompt bids popping up along the east coast and through South Australia, with Adelaide track bid at $305/t. Canola was relatively unchanged across the boards

Liquidity picked up yesterday and we saw more activity on wheat and barley in WA and along the east coast.

The eight-day BOM outlook is forecasting a widespread 10-25mm for eastern states. Harvest is still going in western Victoria, where wheat quality has held up so far on wheat for growers able to resume harvesting.