UKRAINE’S BLACK SEA PORTS SEE MORE GRAIN-BY-RAIL
Railroad grain wagons headed to Ukraine’s ports in the Odesa region have increased 26% to 5,341 from 4,227 over the past week, Reuters reported. Valeriy Tkachov, deputy director of the commercial department at Ukrainian Railways, said in a Facebook post that up to 970 wagons were unloaded at the ports’ silos every day. A week earlier the number of wagons jumped by around 50%. In August, Ukraine launched what it called a “humanitarian corridor” for ships bound for African and Asian markets to try to circumvent a de facto blockade in the Black Sea a month after Russia quit the grain deal that had guaranteed Ukraine’s seaborne exports. The new corridor runs along Ukraine’s southwest Black Sea coast into Romanian territorial waters and onward to Turkey.
Deputy Prime Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov said on Nov. 9 that 91 vessels had exported 3.3 million tonnes of agricultural and metal products since the new corridor started operating in August. The UCAB agricultural business association said this month that Ukrainian grain agricultural exports rose by 15% to 4.8 million tonnes in October thanks to the new corridor. Ukraine’s government expects a grain and oilseeds harvest of 79 million tonnes in 2023, with the marketing year 2023-24 exportable surplus of about 50 million tonnes.
(Link: WorldGrain)
USDA LOWERS CORN, WHEAT AREA FORECAST
The US Department of Agriculture on Nov. 7 projected area planted to soybeans to expand in 2024, but wheat and corn planting areas were forecast to decline. The USDA forecast area planted to all wheat for harvest in 2024 at 48 million acres, down 1.2 million acres from 49.6 million acres in 2023. The USDA projected area planted to corn in 2024 at 91 million acres, down 3.9 million acres, or 4%, from 94.9 million acres in 2023. The USDA forecast soybean planted area in 2024 at 87 million acres, up 3.4 million acres, or 4%, from 83.6 million acres in 2023.
(Link: WorldGrain)
