Headlines:

  • Sugar futures fall back below 14 cents, as Brazil’s output revives
    Raw sugar futures for March dropped below 14 cents a pound for the first time in more than a month after output in Brazil’s key Centre South region was shown to have rebounded faster than investors had expected. Raw sugar for March, the best-traded contract, tumbled 3.5% in late deals in New York to 13.85 cents a pound, the lot’s weakest level in five weeks. The decline followed the release by cane industry group Unica of data showing that mills in the Centre South, responsible for more than 90% of Brazilian sugar output, produced 3.13m tonnes of sugar in the first half of this month. That was 50,000 tonnes above the volume that investors had expected, according to a poll by S&P Global Platts, returning the pace of output close to an early-August high.
  • Oil lubricates wheat price gains. Cotton drops
    The good news for wheat bulls was that oil prices were holding their ground at two-year highs. Brent crude for November stood unchanged at $59.02 a barrel, having touched $59.59 a barrel earlier, a fresh highest-since-July-2015, with the gains attributed to strong demand and ideas that independence elections among Iraqi Kurds may lead to supply disruptions. Higher oil prices tend to support the Russian ruble, which is in turn a support to global wheat prices, though raising the price of the country’s huge exports of the grain, prospects of which have been boosted by a record harvest. The ruble nudged 0.1% higher against the dollar, to 57.4 per $1.

Summary:

With the focus on the potential for better yields ahead of the USDA report set for release on Friday Soybean led the markets lower today dropping 7.75 cents. Corn was down 1.75 and Wheat was only marginally off losing 0.75 cents. Both Corn and Beans are trailing the 5-year average as far is harvesting is concerned. There has been scattered rainfall in many parts of the country last week with heavy rain running through a stretch from West Texas up through to the top of the country and pushing a bit east along that stretch through western Kansas, central Nebraska and the eastern Dakotas. Additional rainfall was forecasted for parts of southern Iowa, northern and central Missouri, and extreme eastern Kansas today according to the National Weather Service (NWS). Hurricane Maria will approach the East Coast this week but is expected to move eastward into the open Atlantic Ocean. It won’t make landfall, but it may come close to North Carolina and bring tropical force-speed winds, heavy rain and a storm surge, according to the NWS.