Wheat futures on world exchanges fell by 1.8-3.3% for the week

A significant volume of wheat offers on the world market against the background of low demand leaves quotations at multi-year lows, and during the past week prices have decreased by another 1.8-3.3%.

On Thursday, on the news about the suspension of the Black Sea Grain Corridor, quotations rose slightly, but after the resumption of work, they immediately fell again.

December futures have remained flat for three straight weeks, but were slightly lower on Friday:

• by 0.7% to $211.5/t – for soft winter SRW wheat in Chicago (-1.8% for the week, +1.8% for the month),
• by 1.8% to $236.3/t – for hard winter HRW wheat in Kansas City (-4.2%, -5.3%),
• by 0.6% to $264.5/t – for hard spring HRS-wheat in Minneapolis (-1.5%, +0.1%),
• by 0.5% to €232.25/t or $245.2/t – for wheat on the Paris Euronext (-3.3%, -3.3%).

The improvement of weather conditions in the main exporting countries, including rains in the USA, EU, Ukraine, Brazil and Argentina, is putting pressure on the prices of the future harvest, the fate of which worries traders.

According to the Buenos Aires Stock Exchange (BAGE), on October 25, 0.53 million tons of wheat were collected from 6.8% of the area in Argentina with a yield of 1.34 tons/ha. The recent rains will contribute to the pouring of grain, but will not significantly change the yield.

The European Commission raised the forecast for the EU soft wheat harvest by 0.2 to 125.5 million tons, but lowered the export forecast by 1 to 31 million tons, as a result of which the final stocks will amount to 19.1 million tons, which will almost correspond to last year’s 19.25 million tons

According to FranceAgriMer estimates, 54% of the area was sown with winter wheat in France on October 23.

Turkey plans to increase wheat production in 2023/24 compared to the previous season by 10.4% to 21.8 million tons.

Ukraine actively exports wheat, and has already shipped 4.4 million tons, in particular, in October – 1.06 million tons, compared to 4.68 million tons and 1.6 million tons, respectively, last year. More and more ships enter the Black Sea ports, which allows to increase exports.

Rainfall contributed to the sowing of winter wheat, with which 3.456 million hectares of the planned 4 million hectares were sown in Ukraine on October 24. Warm weather in the next two weeks will allow another 400-500 thousand hectares to be sown.

Against the backdrop of increased shipments through the Black Sea ports, traders increased demand for feed wheat and raised purchase prices to $120-130/t with delivery to Odesa and Danube ports. But farmers are not ready to sell wheat at low prices, so they actively sell corn at $125-130/ton.

Tags: Argentina, Ukraine, Turkey, Brazil, EU, prices, France, wheat, USA