Country News

Brazil: Sergio Mendes, director of the cereals export association ANEC expresses concern that a strike by the Federal Agricultural Agents Union (Anffa) could adversely impact some corn exports. Brazil is likely to be the world’s number two corn exporter this year. (Reuters)

India: The latest Ministry of Agriculture/GOI estimate for the 2014/15 Kharif season corn crop places production at 15.5 MMT, down 5.43 percent from an earlier estimate, and overall coarse cereal production at 27.88 MMT, down 6.5 percent. Some believe that the faltering monsoon will have produced even less grain than currently estimated.

Romania: The corn harvest is 40 percent complete with production expected to be down 25 percent from last year due to an extremely hot and dry summer.

Ukraine: The unusually dry weather this summer places one private estimate of the current corn crop at 25 MMT, though other analysts say it could drop to 23 MMT. That would be 15 percent lower than USDA’s current forecast and a 20 percent reduction from corn production a year earlier. (Dow Jones)