Grains were higher overnight led by wheat which posted a 5-cent advance; corn was up 2 while soybeans came in 3-cents higher.
Wheat has found continued support thanks to news Egypt’s GASC may be in the market for US-only SRW wheat. However, the decision to buy US-only wheat may not be strictly a result of better prices. Instead, Mamdouh Abdel Fattah, vice chairman of the General Authority for Supply Commodities (GASC), said Egypt has a special $100 million credit line the United States made available to the Egyptian government in recent years for purchases of U.S. wheat. He went on to suggest "This has been an option for us for some time, so if the prices are right and we feel the need to use that to buy U.S. wheat, we will.” Overall, however, US export business remains slow. Thursday’s weekly US sales report showed only 397,000 MT. On Thursday, EU showed a record high week of 1.674 MMT, besting the previous record in 2010 of 1.03 MT
For beans, the Buenos Aires Grains Exchange said on Thursday that Argentina should produce a record-high soybean crop in the 2014/15 season of 57 MMT, giving its first harvest forecast for this crop year. That estimate is quite a bit higher than the latest USDA forecast of 55 MMT.
In the corn market, Thursday’s export sales were at the low end of expectations but still coming in relatively strong at 844,900 MT this week. Although sales slowed from last week, corn bookings are still running 2.6 MMT ahead of pace to meet the USDA’s expectations. At the National Cattlemen's Beef Association conference in San Antonio, Texas, meteorologist Art Douglas, a professor emeritus in the Dept of Atmospheric Sciences at Creighton University, says cool weather will likely delay U.S. crop planting in the spring. He says the U.S. will go through US corn pollination with cool weather and then temps will heat up in August. At the same conference, CattleFax projects this year's U.S. corn yield will be in the low 160s, with production of around 13.3-13.5 billion bushels.
