Country News
Canada: Despite a crippling and unprecedented transportation bottleneck, Canada’s large corn harvest is making its way across the Atlantic into the feed rations of Ireland’s cattle, according to Reuters. While typically a net-importer, Canada harvested a record 14.2 MMT of corn in 2013. While most of this crop will remain at home for use in ethanol production, around 185,000 MT was shipped abroad between August and December 2013 with almost three-quarters of it slated for Ireland. While the volumes exported this year will be substantially higher than most years, they will likely still fall short of the 600,000 MT exported in 2012/13.
South Africa: South African yellow corn for July delivery declined by 1.6 percent to $199.87/MT, reports Bloomberg News. National corn stockpiles are down by 25 percent compared to this time last year, with yellow corn at 1.33 MMT. Monthly demands for corn are around 900,000 MT, which will have to hold until the April harvest.
South Africa has also delivered the first 20,000 MT of a total of 150,000 MT of corn to Zimbabwe this week, according to WPI. It had previously been delayed due to the holiday season.
Ukraine: Ukraine and Iran have announced that they will be collaborating more closely on the development of joint agricultural efforts with the hoped-for effect of tripling their business dealings together, according to WPI. Ukraine hopes to continue expanding its grain exports to Iran beyond their current annual totals of 2 MMT as well as move further into livestock, food supply and food production.
Zambia: Corn millers continue to voice concern about short corn supplies for milling and that the 30,000 MT released by the government has neither balanced supplies nor halted the rapid increase in corn prices, according to WPI. Millers further allege that the government has yet to discharge the 30,000 MT of corn, and that the process has not started due to administrative complications. As a result of this, prices continue to soar as supplies continue to shrink.