Corn contracts on Euronext/Matif also fell yesterday. The most traded June contract lost 2.25 euros/t on the first trading day of the new week and closed at 277.25 euros/t. The March contract fell more significantly with low turnover, but closing outs shortly before the last trading day of the contract are responsible for the significant movement. Due to technical problems, the EU Commission has not yet published any updated import figures, but the market supply is still considered to be sufficient. However, a lower demand from the feed industry is definitely being noticed. In Brazil, the first corn harvest is 27.6 percent complete, compared to 39 percent at the end of February last year. The sowing of the second harvest is also lagging behind the pace of the previous year, but is said to be around 39 percent complete (previous year 48.7 percent). Corn also went south on the CBoT yesterday. Negative price trends are also evident today with the start of pre-market trading. Weekly export shipments, released yesterday by the USDA, totaled 572,000 tons, a disappointing 50,000 tons less than the previous week.The US dollar lost some strength yesterday, but the competitiveness of the Americans is clearly limited.
Source
VR AGRICULTURAL
