By Phil Franz-Warkentin, MarketsFarm
WINNIPEG, April 22 (MarketsFarm) – The ICE Futures canola market continued to rally into the weekend, setting fresh contract highs once again.
Gains in Chicago Board of Trade soyoil, Malaysian palm oil and European rapeseed futures all provided spillover support for canola. Weakness in the Canadian dollar, which dropped sharply relative to its United States counterpart, was also supportive.
A lack of significant farmer selling was also supportive, as producers show reluctance to forward price too much canola after last year’s drought.
Read Also
Canadian Financial Close: C$ steady Friday
Glacier FarmMedia — The Canadian dollar held steady on Friday as investors squared positions ahead of the weekend. The Canadian…
However, some profit-taking did come forward, taking values off their session highs.
Statistics Canada releases its first survey-based acreage estimates for the upcoming growing season on April 26. While strong prices should be encouraging an increase in seeded canola area from the 22.5 million acres planted in 2021, many market participants still anticipate a slight decline in canola area due to competition from other crops and rising input costs.
About 23,047 canola contracts traded on Friday, which compares with Thursday when 15,605 contracts changed hands. Spreading accounted for 13,740 of the contracts traded.
SOYBEAN futures at the Chicago Board of Trade moved lower on Friday, as profit-taking ahead of the weekend was more than enough to counter support from a rally in soyoil.
The front month soyoil futures climbed to all-time highs during the session, taking direction from palm oil. Indonesia, the world’s largest producer of palm oil, announced that it would halt exports of the commodity after April 28 in an effort to tackle high domestic prices.
The United States Department of Agriculture reported flash sales of 144,000 tonnes of soybeans to Mexico this morning.
CORN also posted losses despite solid export demand, taking some direction from soybeans.
The USDA reported flash export sales of just over 1.3 million tonnes of corn to China this morning, with Mexico also in the market for 281,000 tonnes of U.S. corn.
Argentina’s corn harvest was just about a quarter complete, according to a report out of the country. Meanwhile, farmers in France have seeded about a third of their next corn crop, which was slightly off the year-ago pace.
WHEAT ended mixed, seeing some consolidation after Thursday’s losses.
Opinions are divided ahead of next week’s Statistics Canada report on wheat acres in the country, with estimates coming in about a half-a-million acres above or below the 23.5 million seeded in 2021.
