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December 16, 2014

16/12/2014: Russia export fears push wheat prices to multi-month highs

Wheat futures hit a five-month high in Chicago, and recorded their highest finish in Paris in six months, amid fears over supplies from Russia, for which export curbs are "very much on the agenda", a trading house warned, according to Agrimoney.com

Chicago wheat for March touched US$6.22 ¾ a bushel, its highest since July, before easing to close at US$6.19 a bushel, a gain of 2.1 percent.

 


Paris wheat for March, the best-traded contract, closed up 1.1 percent at €191.75 a tonne, its highest finish since June, while in London, May feed wheat gained 1.7 percent to UK£137.45 a tonne.

The gains came amid fresh fears that Russia, facing high food inflation - stoked by a ban on Western ag imports introduced in retaliation for sanctions imposed over the country's role in stoking Ukraine unrest – would clamp down on grain exports.

While Russia's government has foresworn an export ban, as it has imposed in the past in times of constrained domestic supplies, it is still considering some mechanisms to constrain shipments.

Farm minister Nikolai Fyodorov, who last week flagged the need to quell domestic grain prices and maintain supplies for domestic consumption, said in an interview with news agency Tass that other measures are under consideration.

"The only thing which we should look at is limiting of grain exports which go through shell offshore firms," he said.

He did not expand on the definition of shell offshore firms. Many foreign ag trading groups ship Russian wheat.

One of these trading houses,  with other Russian interests, said in a comment made before Mr Fyodorov's latest statement that "clearly, export controls are still very much on the agenda in Russia and will continue to be so”.

This was "as long as the value of the rouble continues to fall", making prices of exports, in local terms, "ever higher”.

As an extra boost to wheat futures, there remain some concerns over crop potential for 2015 in both Russia and Ukraine, thanks to dry weather heading into winter.

UkrAgroConsult on Monday estimated Ukraine's wheat harvest next year at 20m tonnes, down more than 3m tonnes year on year, saying that "at first glance, this is the worst crop conditions in the past three years.

"Some 270,000 hectares of plantings had failed to emerge," as of 10 days ago, the consultancy said.

Furthermore, in the US, warmer temperatures this week will "green up" crops, but will also "increase stress" in areas without adequate soil moisture, weather service MDA said.

US exports last week were improved too, at 385,974 tonnes, compared with 270,217 tonnes the week before, if still below the 479,810 tonnes in the same week of 2013.

And on a technical perspective, Chicago wheat for March rose above, and indeed closed above, its 200-day moving average for the first time since May. 



Read more HERE.
 


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