By: Editorial Team, StoneX Media
Roughly 28% of the world's wheat exports and around 10% of its corn exports come from just two countries, Russia and Ukraine, and that concentration is why a regional conflict keeps resetting global grain prices. Grain export concentration on this scale means the market does not need to lose tonnage to reprice, it only needs to doubt that the tonnage can move. Renewed attacks on ports, terminals, and vessels in the Black Sea have pushed wheat higher on the Chicago Board of Trade, pulling corn along with it. The question that follows is which alternative origins can actually supply the difference.
Raphael Bulascoschi, StoneX Brazil Market Intelligence Analyst, tracks grain, oilseed, and soft commodity markets and delivers pricing research to commercial agricultural clients across South America. He works across the Brazilian and Argentine supply chains that global buyers turn to when Black Sea flows come under threat, and across the production and policy changes that decide how much those origins have to sell.
Wheat and corn on the Chicago Board of Trade reprice on threatened Black Sea flows rather than confirmed losses, and export concentration is the reason. "When the attacks start hitting ports, terminals and even civilian vessels in the Black Sea, the market tends to price the risk that these flows won't be able to move at a normal pace", Bulascoschi explains, adding that "that uncertainty over supply translates into higher risk premiums". Because Russia and Ukraine between them account for roughly 28% of world wheat exports, no other origin sits close enough in scale to neutralize that doubt quickly. Buyers with physical exposure to wheat and corn face price movement driven by shipping risk in a single corridor, not by a change in the global balance sheet. The wider the attacks spread across export infrastructure, the more logistical disruption feeds the same premium.
"The main potential winner for this situation is Argentina", according to Bulascoschi, who points to a record corn harvest and promising wheat crop prospects as the factors behind ample supply and competitive prices. Argentina's advantage is also fiscal, since the government has cut the retentions, the export taxes applied to agricultural products, which improves how Argentine grain prices against rival origins. Brazil, in contrast, is entering its corn export window with less to give, because strong domestic consumption and stock building for the next season squeeze the exportable surplus and can leave the grain less competitive on the world market. For a commercial buyer, that difference decides where the replacement tonnage realistically comes from. As Bulascoschi puts it, "there is room for gains in both Argentina and Brazil because of the situation in the Black Sea", though the two openings are not the same size.
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--- Written by Frédéric Guétin, StoneX Media Producer
--- Expert: Raphael Bulascoschi, StoneX Brazil Market Intelligence Analyst
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Two countries handle a share of world wheat and corn exports large enough that attacks on their ports reset prices for everyone else. South America has room to gain from the disruption, but the size of that gain differs sharply between Argentina and Brazil.
August 21 – Stock futures rallied overnight, despite a plethora of negative headlines flowing from the media. One can read the news this morning and fall into despair, but then look to see positive stock futures trading just below recent record highs. The VIX is again trading near 15 this morning, with the dollar index trading near 98.7 as it sits at three-month lows. Yields on 10-year Treasuries are trading near 4.71%, while yields on 2-year Treasuries are trading near 4.20%. WTI crude oil is near $87 per barrel, while Brent trades near $94. The grain and oilseed markets traded mostly weaker overnight as we approach a weekend when the headlines are sure to continue to flow from both the Middle East and Black Sea wars, although we also saw big flash sales from USDA this morning.
Crop tour scouts are finding real damage in individual fields while the futures market keeps trading a good national crop, and both readings are correct at the same time. The gap between them is settled in the cash market, where basis does the work that a national average cannot.
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