EU Wheat Dips From Three-Month High Ahead of Algeria Tender
Reuters – 10/21/2019
European wheat futures eased from a three-month high on Monday, curbed by a pullback in Chicago as traders waited to see if a tender called by Algeria would provide further demand impetus. Technical resistance on price charts and the possibility that a recent rally may have been overdone contributed to Monday’s weakness, though prices remained supported by steady international demand, rising Black Sea markets and worsening harvest prospects in the southern hemisphere, traders said. Benchmark December milling wheat on Paris-based Euronext settled 0.50 euros, or 0.3%, down at 180.75 euros ($201.54) a tonne after touching a three-month high of 182.25 euros. “People are thinking wheat needs to fall back, but no one really wants to go short. They’re being cautious,” a French trader said.
Photosynthesis Olympics: Can the Best Wheat Varieties be Even Better?
ScienceDaily – 10/17/2019
Scientists have put elite wheat varieties through a sort of “Photosynthesis Olympics” to find which varieties have the best performing photosynthesis. This could ultimately help grain growers to get more yield for less inputs in the farm. “In this study we surveyed diverse high-performing wheat varieties to see if their differences in photosynthetic performance were due to their genetic makeup or to the different environments where they were grown,” said lead researcher Dr Viridiana Silva-Perez from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Translational Photosynthesis (CoETP). The scientists found that the best performing varieties were more than 30 percent better than the worst performing ones and up to 90 percent of the differences were due to their genes and not to the environment they grew in. “We focused on traits related to photosynthesis and found that some traits behaved similarly in different environments. This is useful for breeders, because it is evidence of the huge potential that photosynthesis improvement could have on yield, a potential that hasn’t been exploited until now,” says Dr Silva-Perez.
Durum Prices Struggling Through Tough Harvest Conditions
AgUpdate – 10/21/2019
For durum, the harvest situation really hasn’t gotten any better for producers as they’ve had to deal with rain throughout harvest, and now, over Oct. 10-12, snowfall has slowed things down even more. “For producers it’s just a very difficult situation getting the crop off,” said Erica Olson, marketing specialist with the North Dakota Wheat Commission. Similar to spring wheat, it’s tough to say how much durum is left to harvest. The last crop progress report in early October indicated 21 percent of the crop was left to harvest in North Dakota and 36 percent remaining in Montana. “Some producers feel that there’s more than that out there, but it’s really tough to get a hard number,” she said. “At this point, a lot of those acres will be abandoned or zeroed out for insurance purposes because the quality downgrades are, obviously, very, very severe at this point and a lot of that would be feed wheat.”
5 Key Takeaways from the 2019 Borlaug Dialogue
Farming First – 10/18/2019
The 2019 Borlaug Dialogue concluded today with three final panels exploring the importance of building resilience against climate change and conflict – neatly wrapping up the main topics of conversation that have appeared over the last three days. Two major issues that cropped up time and again were climate change and the projected global population growth. With these looming challenges, many speakers highlighted the need for the agricultural world to not only prioritise increases in productivity, but also nutrition, livelihoods and the environment. This will be driven not only by technological advances but also through wider adoption of existing solutions. In his last year as President of the World Food Prize, Ambassador Ken Quinn posed a resounding question before the Dialogue commenced: “Can we sustainably and nutritiously feed the 9-10 billion people who are going to be on our planet in the next 25-30 years?” The subsequent sessions endeavoured to find answers to this essential question.
Source: U.S. Wheat Associates