Monday, March 19, 2012

20120319 1011 Soy Oil & Palm Oil Related News.

Soybeans (Source: CME)
US soy futures end higher, extending the market's uptrend. Strong export demand coupled with traders assumptions that corn will take acres away from soybeans this season continued to push soy prices higher, analysts say. Warm/dry Midwest weather leads many to increase corn acre estimates at the expense of beans, says analyst Doug Bergman at RCM Asset Management. Soybeans ended up for 25th time in the last 33 trading days. CBOT May soybeans end up 5c at $13.74/bushel.

Soybean Meal/Oil (Source: CME)
Soy product futures followed soybeans lead, buoyed by prospect that lower South American supplies will lead to increased US demand. May soymeal end up $3 to $374.40/short ton; and May soyoil ended up 0.02c at 55.50 cents/lb.

Palm oil hovers below 9-mth high, exports support
SINGAPORE, March 16 (Reuters) - Malaysian palm oil futures were almost flat as some traders booked profits from a nine-month high notched in the previous session, while strong exports and soybean supply fears in drought-hit South America supported prices.
"The market's trading in a tight range today. There's some profit taking as the market has been up almost 200 ringgit since the palm oil conference (last week)," said a trader with a foreign commodities brokerage in Malaysia.

Canada farm dept bumps up canola area, trims wheat
March 15 (Reuters) - Canada's agriculture department slightly raised its forecast for 2012/13 canola plantings, while trimming its wheat estimate on Thursday.
Dry conditions heading into planting season are expected to boost plantings of most major crops, after flooding wiped out millions of acres last year. Canola prices have recently spiked to a six-month high, offering attractive returns to farmers.

Argentina slowly starts to harvest drought-hit soy
BUENOS AIRES, March 15 (Reuters) - Argentine farmers have started harvesting soybeans but heavy rains that arrived after months of drought have slowed efforts to gather the parched crops, the Buenos Aires Grains Exchange said on Thursday.
Downpours have been bogging down harvesting machines as they try to move across fields in the Pampas farm belt that were bone dry only two months ago during the dog days of the Southern Hemisphere summer.


Malaysia has already lost its top spot as the number one producer of crude palm oil (CPO) and crude palm kernel oil (CPKO) to Indonesia because of two major factors - land and labour. Malaysia has just not got enough land. With strict policies to maintain forest cover at about 50% of total land area it is difficult to keep planting more and more oil palm.
• Neighbouring countries have got a huge advantage in this area. The four Indonesian provinces that make up Kalimantan alone are 55m hectares in size. If just 20% of the land there is used for oil palm cultivation, that would eclipse Malaysia's total oil palm land capacity. The only way for Malaysia to resolve its limited land size is for oil palm plantations to expand outside Malaysia.
• Malaysian plantation companies started this exodus initially to Indonesia where currently 30% of land there is being cultivated by Malaysian companies. However, Indonesia itself is competing in the world palm oil market and is therefore less amenable to let go of its land to its competitors. (BT)

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