Weather has given grain traders and farmers lots of new scenarios to digest.
In Canada, the Prairies finally had a taste of summer with sun and warm weather allowing crops to make good use of recent moisture.
But it was weather developments in the United States that occupied traders’ minds early this week, causing them to bid up soybean prices.
Tropical storm Arlene blew significant amounts of Asian soybean rust spores into six southern states and marginal amounts into southern Ohio, Missouri and the central Appalachians, although not the key soybean states of Iowa and Illinois.
Read Also
Canada-U.S. trade relationship called complex
Trade issues existed long before U.S. president Donald Trump and his on-again, off-again tariffs came along, said panelists at a policy summit last month.
While worrisome, this does not necessarily mean that the disease, which blew into the U.S. last year with Hurricane Ivan, will become a problem. Weather has to be conducive to allow the rust to spread into the crop. Cloudy, humid conditions are most likely to assist spreading.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture and state agrologists are watching sentinel plots established from Florida to North Dakota to trace the movements of the disease.
But if it is warm, moist weather that encourages soy rust, it won’t have much luck in Illinois, where rainfall is 130-160 millimetres below normal this spring.
Illinois was the largest soybean producer in the U.S. last year.
The forecast was for dry conditions to continue and that also supported the price of soybeans and other oilseeds, including canola.
While some American farmers worried about lack of rain, eastern Australian farmers are celebrating.
Early in the planning of this page, we had produced a story with an accompanying photo showing an Australian farmer in as bleak a drought environment as any on the Canadian Prairies in 2002 or 1988. The Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics was forecasting that production of the three major crops of wheat, barley and canola would fall 21 percent, 13 percent and 30 percent respectively from 2004.
But heavy and widespread rain over the weekend has made an enormous difference to Aussi farmers and the look of this page, now topped by a smiling farmer. Producers are busy seeding land that they’d planned to leave fallow because of the drought, and the crop production assessment is likely to change.
However, regular rain will be needed to produce a crop and fields seeded now will be subject to frost fears.
We’ll keep you updated as these situations develop and affect markets.
