Reading Time: < 1 minute The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission last Tuesday voted 3-2 in favour of a long-awaited rule that would curb excessive speculation in commodity markets, with the decision going along party lines. The futures regulator s rule will limit the number of futures and swaps contracts any one trader can hold. Wall Street and trading companies […] Read more
U.S. To Curb Speculators
Chinese Demand Supports Canola
Reading Time: 3 minutes Canola futures on the ICE Futures Canada trading platform managed a rally during the week ended Oct. 14, recovering some of the losses experienced in the previous reporting periods. Confirmation of fresh Chinese demand for Canadian canola helped to generate some of the price strength, as did the reluctance of Prairie producers to deliver canola […] Read more
StatsCan Trims Canola Estimate
Reading Time: < 1 minute Canada s 2011 canola crop prospects shrunk since a midsummer forecast, while the outlook for the wheat harvest grew slightly, Statistics Canada said last Tuesday. It estimated the all-wheat crop at 24.16 million tonnes, up from 23.2 million tonnes a year ago, mainly due to a rise in durum production to 3.94 million tonnes from […] Read more
Soy Crop Another Record
Reading Time: < 1 minute Brazil s new 2011-12 soybean crop is seen at a record 75.2 million tonnes versus 74.9 million tonnes harvested last season, analysts Celeres said last Monday. Area planted to soybeans is forecast to reach record territory at 25 million hectares (61.8 million acres), up 3.6 per cent from last season, Celeres said in its monthly […] Read more
Harvest Weighs On Canola
Reading Time: 3 minutes The ICE Futures Canada canola market saw some wide price swings during the week ended Sept. 30, finishing with declines after testing downside resistance on a number of occasions. On the whole, the bearish factors in the market outweigh anything supportive, but a short-covering bounce does remain a possibility going forward. The canola harvest is […] Read more
Harami Predicted A Strong U.S. Dollar
Reading Time: 3 minutes You d be hard pressed to find anyone this summer whowasn t aware of the United States escalating debt, increasing unemployment and home foreclosures that produced the current economic slowdown. All summer, as the news grew increasingly bearish, with newspaper headlines suggesting the greenback was about to crash and burn, more market analysts began saying […] Read more
Large U.S. Corn Stocks Report Shocks Traders
Reading Time: 2 minutes U.S. corn and wheat stocks were much larger than expected at the end of the summer, providing a larger buffer against this year s reduced harvest and driving some grain prices to their lowest levels this year. In a sign that near-record grain prices curbed demand far more than analysts had anticipated, inventories of corn […] Read more
Corn Fungus Adds To Hard Year For U.S. Farmers
Reading Time: 2 minutes Corn farmers in some parts of the U.S. Plains are finding their newly harvested crop has to be heavily discounted or cannot be sold at all due to the presence of a vicious fungus that makes the corn dangerous to eat. The culprit is aflatoxin toxins produced by a fungus that can harm and possibly […] Read more
Record China Grain Output
Reading Time: < 1 minute China is likely to reap another bumper grain harvest this year, and output may rise three per cent from a year ago to a record of more than 560 million tonnes, a senior government official said. The country s total grain output may hit a record again, the eighth year with a bumper harvest, Zhang […] Read more
Biofuel Mandates Distort Prices
Reading Time: < 1 minute Cargill sees limited future growth of the biofuel industry and does not support the use of government mandates on bioethanol or biodiesel because such requirements distort prices. Our view on biofuels is they are here to stay but we probably won t see the growth we have seen in the last decade, Paul Conway, vice-chairman […] Read more
Cyber-Savvy Farmer
