20110706 1103 Soy Oil & Palm Oil Related News.

Soybeans (Source: CME)
US soybean futures end higher, but remain confined within recent trading ranges in the absence of fresh demand to extend advances. The market is trapped in a range until it can receive some fresh meaningful news to change market outlooks, says Sterling Smith, analyst with brokerage Country Hedging. There is enough doubt about the 2011 crops and acreage to underpin prices, but a lack of weather threats limit advances, he adds. Traders say the buying of corn and wheat versus selling soy on spreads limited advances as well. CBOT November soy ended up 5 1/2c at $13.18/bushel.

Soybean Meal/Oil (Source: CME)
Soy product futures finished mixed, with prices chopping around in unison with soybeans. Soymeal and soyoil ended with prices hovering near unchanged levels, as traders were unwilling to aggressively push prices in the absence of fresh directive news, analysts say. CBOT Dec soyoil end down 0.09c at 56.21 cents/pound, and Dec soymeal end down 10 cents at $340.90/short ton.

Palm oil eases to match 8-mth low as stocks seen rising
JAKARTA, July 5 (Reuters) - Malaysian palm oil futures traded lower in a tight trading range , matching an eight-month low touched last week, as output entered into a higher production cycle and lukewarm demand pushed prices lower.
"It is most likely that people are worrying about higher end stocks in Malaysia," said one Indonesia-based trader. "Malaysian production is still good, with Indonesia lagging. The 3,000-level is a support level."

Malaysia June palm oil stocks seen near record levels
KUALA LUMPUR, July 5 (Reuters) - Malaysian palm oil stocks likely rose 11.3 percent to near record levels in June as strong production and imports outpaced local and overseas demand, a Reuters poll showed on Tuesday.    
Stocks in the world's No. 2 palm oil producer climbed to 2.13 million tonnes from a month ago -- just shy of a record 2.2 million tonnes hit in December 2009, a median survey of six plantation houses showed.

Argentina's El Tejar turns No. 1 Brazil soy grower
SAO PAULO, July 4 (Reuters) - With only eight years in Brazil, Argentine farming group El Tejar has overtaken the leading national grower in soybean output through a business model of leasing local farmland rather than buying it.
O Telhar, as it is know here in Portuguese, has focused its operations in Mato Grosso, Brazil's main soybean producing state in the center-west grain belt, where it plants 300,000 hectares (740,000 acres), analysts estimate.

Brazil soy sales edge higher, crop revised up--Celeres
SAO PAULO, July 4 (Reuters) - Sales of Brazil's upwardly revised record 74.8-million-tonne soybean crop edged up slightly from the previous week, analysts Celeres said Monday.
In its latest weekly report, Celeres said sales of the current crop that ended harvesting in May stood at 73 percent by July 1, up from 72 percent in the previous week but slightly behind the average rate for this time of year of 74 percent.

Brazil's 2010-11 Soy Crop Seen At Record 74.9M Tons
Brazil's 2010-11 soy crop was larger than previously estimated, as higher productivity and a greater area of land planted with the oilseed resulted in record output, agricultural consultancy Celeres said Monday. Brazil's recently harvested soy crop likely reached a total 74.9 million metric tons, up 9.3% from the 2009-10 volume, Celeres said in a weekly report. The latest calculation surpasses Celeres's previous estimate of 73.6 million tons, made a month ago. Celeres said good financing availability gave soy producers conditions to invest in technology and to expand their planted area. Weather cooperated. Soy production surpassed previous estimates in Parana, Goias and Rio Grande do Sul, among other states, Celeres said.
On the other hand, production was hampered in Mato Grosso do Sul because of late planting and in Minas Gerais due to excessive rainfall. Nationwide, 24.1 million hectares of land were planted with soy in the 2010-11 crop, up 3.5% from a year earlier. Productivity rose 5.6% to 3,101 kilograms of soybeans per hectare. Sale of the crop now stands at around 73% of the amount produced and is roughly in line with the average of the past five years, Celeres added. An ever-strengthening local currency has eaten away at the bonanza that Brazil's soy producer are seeing as a result of the record production. Local soy prices fell by about 1.6% last week as the Brazilian real appreciated to its highest level against the dollar since 1999.

Palm Oil Dropping to Lowest in More Than Nine Months May Reduce Food Costs (Source: Bloomberg)
Palm-oil prices may extend their decline to the lowest level in more than nine months as supply climbs in Malaysia, the second-largest producer, potentially helping trim global food costs. The tropical oil may tumble 7.9 percent to 2,800 ringgit a metric ton ($931) by Sept. 30, a level last seen in early October, according to the median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of eight analysts. Inventories climbed 5.8 percent to 2.03 million tons in June in Malaysia and output increased 2.3 percent to 1.78 million tons, a separate survey of three analysts and two plantation companies showed. Cheaper prices of palm oil used in instant noodles, margarine and soaps may cool global commodity costs, curbing inflation that has spurred more than two dozen countries to increase interest rates this year and containing expenses for Unilever and Nestle SA. Food prices tracked by the United Nations increased nine times in the past 11 months and in May, stayed near their record reached in February.
“The velocity of CPO production is unbelievable,” said Dorab Mistry, director of Godrej International Ltd., referring to crude palm oil. He correctly predicted last year that prices would climb to more than 3,000 ringgit. “I have never seen anything like this in Malaysia.”

Malaysian Supply
Palm oil climbed to 3,967 ringgit on Feb. 10, the highest level in almost three years, as global demand outstripped supply before reversing to close at 3,040 ringgit today, a 20 percent decline this year. The Standard & Poor’s GSCI gauge of 24 commodities tumbled 7.8 percent last quarter as wheat dropped 20 percent, cotton slumped 41 percent and oil retreated 11 percent. Production from Malaysia may reach 17.6 million tons this year from 17 million tons in 2010, said Plantation Industries and Commodities Minister Bernard Dompok in March. The palm-oil board may increase its forecast to between 18 million and 18.5 million tons, Ong Chee Ting and Chai Li Shin, analysts at Maybank Investment Bank Bhd., said in a report on June 28. “In the near-term we may see some weakness in production, as sometimes in the festive season they have less harvesting, but it should come back after July-August,” Arhnue Tan, senior investment analyst at ECM Libra Capital Sdn., said from Kuala Lumpur.
Muslims observe a day-long fast during the month of Ramadan, which precedes the Eid festival and may start on Aug. 1.

Soybean-Oil Premium
Monthly production may climb as high as 2 million tons and stockpiles may reach 2.2 million tons, Tan said. Inventories of that size would be the highest since December 2009, according to board data. The peak production season is from June to October. The palm-oil board is scheduled to publish its estimates for production, stockpiles and exports last month on July 11. Production climbed 14 percent to 1.74 million tons in May from April, the highest level in 19 months, the board said. Output jumped 15 percent to 4.69 million tons in the three months through May from 4.08 million tons in the year-ago period. Global exports of 17 oils and fats will climb 4.6 percent to 70.3 million tons in the year through September 2012 from the year ago, Oil World said June 28. Palm oil may represent almost 56 percent of shipments, the Hamburg-based researcher said.
“While palm oil inventory is currently ample, the supply of soybean oil and rapeseed oil is tight, providing some floor to the price,” Maybank analysts Ong and Chai said. That pushed the premium of soybean oil over palm oil to $243.26 a ton on June 27, the highest since January 2009.

Indonesia Production
These large discrepancies would probably spur so-called price-sensitive countries to shift away from soybean oil and rapeseed oil to the tropical oil, RHB Research Institute Sdn., said in a report dated June 30. Supply from Indonesia, the world’s biggest grower, is expected to keep expanding at 10 percent to 12 percent each year, the nation’s trade minister Mari Pangestu said in an interview with Bloomberg Television on June 13. The country may produce 25.4 million tons in the year beginning Oct. 1, up from 23.6 million a year earlier, according to U.S. government estimates. “Production is expected to keep on increasing from now because the weather condition is being supportive and extraction is happening well,” Vimala Reddy, an analyst at Karvy Comtrade Ltd., said from the Indian city of Hyderabad, referring to the oil removal rate from fresh-fruit bunches.

US soybean futures end higher, but remain confined within recent trading ranges in the  absence of fresh demand to extend advances. The market is trapped in a range until it can receive some fresh meaningful news to change market outlooks, says Sterling Smith, analyst with brokerage Country Hedging. There is enough doubt about the 2011 crops and acreage to underpin prices, but a lack of weather threats limit advances, he adds. Soy product futures finished mixed, with prices chopping around in unison with soybeans. Soymeal and soyoil ended with prices hovering near unchanged levels, as traders were unwilling to aggressively push prices in the absence of fresh directive news. (Dow Jones)

Scouting a must for 2011 soybean aphids (Source: www.agriculture.com)
Results of fall scouting of soybean aphid indicate that soybean growers may face some level of soybean aphid populations this summer. “We expect Ohio to continue its two-year cycle of very few if any aphids being found followed by low to moderate to even high populations somewhere in the state,” said Ohio State University Extension entomologist Ron Hammond with the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center. Hammond and his colleagues scouted for eggs on buckthorn, the pest’s overwintering host, and found some eggs, although not as many as anticipated. However, given the observations recorded of aphids on buckthorn in other Midwest states, entomologist believe Ohio will likely see more aphids next year than in 2010. “It is impossible to predict which regions of Ohio, if any, will experience outbreak conditions,” said Hammond, explaining that factors ranging from the weather to natural predators all play a role in the severity of aphid populations.
“At this time, growers should just be aware that scouting for aphids will probably be more important next summer during July and early August.” The soybean aphid, first discovered in Ohio in 2001, is a sapsucker whose voracious appetite can greatly damage untreated soybean fields. It also has been known to transmit a host of viruses, including soybean mosaic virus, soybean dwarf virus, and alfalfa mosaic virus not only in soybean but also in a number of vegetable crops. Soybean aphid populations this past summer were practically nonexistent, although entomologists did see a build-up of aphids on late-maturing soybeans. However, the late aphid build-up was expected and is a contributing factor to finding eggs on buckthorn this fall. For growers, the best way to manage the soybean aphid is to educate themselves on the insect, know when to scout, and to carefully time foliar insecticide applications if treatments are warranted. The economic threshold of aphids is 250 insects per plant with a rising population.
"We continue to recommend taking an Integrated Pest Management (IPM) approach to aphid management. While seed treatments will control early season aphid populations, they will not have any impact in mid-summer when aphids arrive in large numbers," said Hammond. "We will recommend scouting soybeans from early July through August, and using the threshold with a rising population density to determine the need for treatment."