Oilseeds News, 22nd / Mar / 2024

The omens for rapeseed were positive this week. Only yesterday did red signs appear due to profit-taking. The front month of May closed at 448.75 euros/t, on Friday of the previous week this contract was still at 436.25 euros per ton. Prices on the cash markets also went north. Rapeseed meal has also improved slightly in recent days and rapeseed oil in the port of Rotterdam is also valued more firmly. Canola in Winnipeg also staged a price rally, but profit-taking caused prices to trend slightly south yesterday. The lower harvest forecasts provided support for rapeseed. Both the Canadian Ministry of Agriculture expects a decline in production with the coming harvest, as does the EU industry association Coceral. For Canada, the ministry is assuming a harvest of 18.1 million tonnes and has reduced not only the harvest quantity but also the estimate of the final stocks. In Europe, the industry association Coceral assumes that the harvest will be 19.1 million tons. That would be around 900,000 tons less than was recently taken from the fields and another 1 percent less than the association had expected in December. In Romania in particular, the cultivated area is significantly lower than in the previous year. For Germany, the association expects a forecast harvest of 3.9 million tons. The Ukrainian Grain Association UGA assumes that the rapeseed harvest will be roughly at the same level as last year at 4.4 million tons. On the other hand, the sunflower harvest in the country on the Black Sea is likely to be significantly lower. Soybeans have gained for the week so far, but are unable to maintain the front-month mark of $12 today. Demand for US beans has recently appeared somewhat friendlier. For the last week, the USDA reported sales of 498,000 tons. The main buyer was China. China itself published import figures for January and February this week. This shows that China has recently increasingly met its bean needs in Brazil. Overall, China imported fewer beans compared to the first two months of 2023. For 2024/25, the USDA assumes in a new estimate that the country will have to import an unchanged 103 million tons of soybeans. The harvest continues in Brazil. This was slowed down somewhat over the course of the week by regionally violent storms with flooding. These storms also threaten parts of the soybean stocks in Argentina.