-Trade estimate summary of Friday’s USDA reports
-Wheat encouraged by Egypt’s SRW purchase
-China lifts ban on French poultry
-No USDA sales announcements
-Wheat encouraged by Egypt’s SRW purchase
-China lifts ban on French poultry
-No USDA sales announcements
USDA’s Prospective Plantings report and quarterly Grain Stocks report will be out Friday mid-morning. A summary of the average trade estimates is on the following page. Our pre-report commentary will be posted on Market Insights later today. It’s a very quiet news morning for the grain markets with corn and soybeans trading modestly lower overnight, while CBOT wheat saw minor gains, possibly due to positive vibe from yesterday’s Egyptian purchase of U.S. SRW. Somewhat lower ethanol production from last week is expected in today’s EIA weekly data.
ï‚· Egypt bought 120k tonnes of U.S. SRW yesterday as a result of their latest tender. Prices paid of $248.24-$248.29/tonne c&f slightly beat out the next lowest offer for Romanian wheat at $250.06/tonne. Russian and Ukrainian wheat were offered at $251.75/tonne. The shipment period was April 25-May 5 so this should go down as old crop exports.
 Indonesia’s palm oil export tax will remain at zero for April as the reference price of $568.12/tonne remains below the taxtriggering threshold.
 Although France has been a limited exporter of poultry products to China historically, China lifted the ban on imports from the country, which had been in place since 2015 following the outbreak of bird flu at the time. The USDA ag attaché in China sees their demand for chicken meat rising 9% in 2019 as a result of reduced pork supplies amid the African swine fever epidemic. France has been a notable supplier of breeding stock to China in the past, though.
 A COFCO International executive, speaking at a global commodities conference, said they intend to double their grain purchases from the Black Sea region in the years ahead without providing details of those amounts. He said COFCO International traded 106 MMT of commodities in total in 2018 and aims to increase total crop purchases directly from farmers outside of China to more than 60 MMT by 2022 vs 40 MMT last year. At the same conference, Glencore Agriculture’s CEO said they see the potential for Russia to increase total grain exports by another 10 MMT by 2025, of which 6-7 MMT could be wheat.
ï‚· There were no USDA sales announcements this morning.
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