Archer Daniels Midland Company and Cargill have reached agreement to launch a joint venture to provide soybean meal and oil for customers in Egypt.

The Buenos Aires Cereal Exchange has updated its soybean production estimate for Argentina and lowered the output to 47 million metric tons. In the previous week, the esimate was at 50 million metric tons.

The Argentinian soybean crush for January was reported at 2.8 million mt, up 25% from December, but down 8% year-on-year, the national directorate of AgriFood markets reported.

Rainfall in key regions of South Africa’s agriculture belt came at a ‘critically important time’, an update from the Grain SA agency said Wednesday.

According to UkrOliyaProm Association, Ukraine took the top position among sunoil and sunmeal producers and exporters in 2017. Ukrainian sunoil is exported to 124 countries of the world. The top foreign consumers of the product include India, China, the EU, the Near East, Africa, Asia and the CIS.

Egypt's General Authority for Supply Commodities (GASC) was back in the market on Tuesday/Wednesday, looking to buy an unspecified amount of wheat third time in a month for delivery from March 22-April 1.

The general condition of the corn in Argentina is rated 57% poor to very poor and the soil moisture is rated 81% short to very short (see tables below).

With new mature area entering full production and expectations for above trend yields, the 2017/18 Indonesian palm oil production forecast is maintained at 38.5 MMT, a 5.5 percent increase from 2016/17, stated in USDA report.

Safras & Mercado analysts increased their estimate of soybean production in Brazil in 2017/18 by 1.7 MMT to 115.6 MMT. This is 1.2% higher than last year.

France’s agriculture agency FranceAgriMer says the country’s 2017 corn crop is 14.8% higher despite a 2.6% decline in area, according to a report.

The drought in the Argentine grain zone will last until the end of February, which will reduce the yield of crops such as corn and soybeans in the 2017/18 season. Such forecast was made on Wednesday by meteorological agency Applied Climatology.

As estimates for the Black Sea nation’s harvest keep growing, so does the outlook for exports.  Export prices for Russian wheat continued rising last week and reached the highest level since November 2015.