North American Grain and Oilseed Review: Canola’s about-face to end week on positive note
Lots of red in U.S. commodities
By Glen Hallick, MarketsFarm
Glacier Farm Media MarketsFarm – Intercontinental Exchange canola futures turned around to close higher on Friday after losing earlier gains this morning.
Ongoing ideas of Canada’s canola crop likely to be well short of Statistics Canada’s estimate of 18.98 million tonnes continued to underpin the market. A number of projections put canola production at 18 million to 18.5 million tonnes. StatCan is scheduled to release its next crop report in December.
Although increases in crude oil were supportive of the vegetable oils, the Chicago soy complex, Malaysian palm oil and European rapeseed stepped back today.
Despite canola exports for the week ended Oct. 20 coming in lower than a week ago at 253,000 tonnes, the Canadian Grain Commission reported year-to-date exports of 2.59 million tonnes. That’s more than twice the amount shipped overseas this time last year.
The January canola contract remained well below its major moving averages.
Canola crush margins were higher with the January position rising to more than C$100 per tonne above the futures.
The Canadian dollar retreated to 72.04 U.S. cents on Friday afternoon, compared to Thursday’s close of 72.23.
There were 54,656 contracts traded on Friday, compared to 48,092 on Thursday. Spreading accounted for 30,602 contracts traded.
Prices are in Canadian dollars per metric tonne:
Price Change Canola Nov 641.40 up 2.80 Jan 654.90 up 1.90 Mar 663.60 up 1.00 May 668.70 up 0.80
SOYBEAN futures at the Chicago Board of Trade corrected lower on Friday.
The United States Department of Agriculture reported a private sale for 116,000 tonnes of current crop soybeans to China.
Ukraine reported its total grain harvest has come to 45.1 million tonnes so far, including 9.5 million tonnes of sunflower, 5.6 million tonnes of soybeans and 3.5 million tonnes of rapeseed.
CORN futures were down on Friday, caught in the spillover from soybeans and wheat.
The USDA announced a private sale of 135,000 tonnes of current crop corn to Mexico.
Ukraine said its corn harvest reached 15.4 million tonnes.
Russia proposed a new international grain exchange involving members of the Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) group of countries. Reports said if the new exchange proceeded it would take a number of years to organize it.
WHEAT futures were weaker on Friday due a lack of fresh news.
The weather outlook for the U.S. Plains has called for rain next week.
France estimated its soft wheat crop at 21 per cent planted compared to 50 per cent seeded this time last year.
Ukraine pegged its wheat harvest currently at 22.3 million tonnes.
The USDA attaché in Kazakhstan held their estimate on the country’s wheat production for 2024/25 at 15.8 million tonnes, with exports slipping to nine million tonnes and ending stocks rising to 3.13 million tonnes.
The Rosario Grain Exchange projected Argentina to produce its second largest wheat crop on record at 13.3 million tonnes.
