Rains seen in recent weeks in Argentina’s agricultural areas allowed producers to finish planting their 2022/23 wheat crop and recharged moisture levels before the next key phases of crop development, the Buenos Aires grains exchange said on Thursday. Argentine farmers planted 6.1 million hectares (15.01 million acres) with 2022/23 wheat, below the 6.7 million of the previous cycle. Several cuts have been made in the grains estimate for the season due to a drought that affected producing regions in recent months. However, the rains of the last two weeks “allowed ...

Vedanta Ltd (NS:VDAN) Iron and Steel Business has recently partnered with IIT Bombay (IIT-B) on an R&D project to develop cost-effective technology for producing Green Steel using hydrogen targeting significant carbon footprint reduction in Iron and Steel space. Further Vedanta-Iron and Steel and IIT–B will collaborate on exchange of knowledge and technology for process innovation and excellence. The first project kick-off meeting between Vedanta-Iron and Steel leadership team and IIT-B senior executives was held through virtual platform which was chaired by Sujal Shah, CEO, Sesa Goa Iron Ore Business, Vedanta ...

Shanxi, a major coal-producing province in north China, has made continuous advances in high-quality development over the past decade, according to a press briefing held Wednesday. Shanxi’s accumulated coal output over the past 10 years reached nearly 10 billion tonnes, accounting for about a quarter of China’s total, said Lin Wu, secretary of the Shanxi Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China, adding that Shanxi’s coal output is expected to reach 1.3 billion tonnes in 2022. While ensuring China’s energy supply, Shanxi has strived to push forward the transition ...

Dalian and Singapore iron ore futures fell on Friday, reversing gains in the previous session, as traders weighed demand prospects in top steel producer China that has been plagued with a debt crisis in its real estate industry. The most-traded iron ore, for delivery in January next year, on China’s Dalian Commodity Exchange DCIOcv1 ended daytime trade 0.6% lower at 730.50 yuan ($108.42) a tonne. The contract, however, was on track for a weekly gain of more than 2% driven by a rebound in margins at mills. On the Singapore ...

Deteriorating pricing and demand coupled with inflationary pressure on input costs is a “double whammy” for North American flat-rolled steelmakers, making this downturn different from previous troughs, Stelco CEO Alan Kestenbaum said Aug. 11. “On top of deteriorating pricing and demand, our business is being challenged with strong headwinds, including inflationary pressures on some of our key inputs, such as natural gas, coal and alloys,” Kestenbaum said during the Canadian steelmaker’s second quarter conference call. “We are concerned about this double hit of higher costs and lower prices and are ...

French maize crop conditions declined steeply last week to their lowest level in at least a decade, data from farm office FranceAgriMer showed, as a worsening drought and latest heatwave baked fields in the European Union’s top grain producer. An estimated 53% of French grain maize was in good or excellent condition by Aug. 8, down from a revised 62% for the previous week, FranceAgriMer said in a cereal crop report on Friday. That was the lowest maize score for the time of year in FranceAgriMer data going back to ...

But these foods could be in shorter supply, with farmers and their crops feeling “extra pressure” because of the extreme heat. England and Wales have entered a heatwave forecast to last until Sunday, with a risk of a smaller harvests on farms. “It’s going to be a tough year for farming with these conditions,” Tom Duggleby tells Radio 1 Newsbeat. The 21-year-old runs a farm on the east coast of Scotland with produce including wheat, barley and peas. Potatoes make up a big part of Tom’s crops, travelling from his ...

The overall coal production in India has increased by 11.37% to 60.42 million ton (MT) from 54.25 MT during July, 2022 as compared to July 2021. As per the provisional statistics of the Ministry of Coal, during July this year Coal India Ltd (CIL), Singareni Collieries Company Ltd (SCCL) and captive mines/others registered a growth of 11.12% and 44.37% by producing 47.33 MT and 9.80 MT coal respectively. However, SCCL registered a negative growth of 32.51% during the month. Of the top 37 coal mines, production of 24 mines was ...

Severe drought is set to slash the European Union’s maize harvest by 10 million tonnes, dropping it to a 15-year a low of 55.4 million tonnes, consultancy Strategie Grains said in its monthly forecast.. The forecast marked a 15% cut to its July estimate of 65.4 million tonnes for 2022/23 EU maize (corn) production. Crop forecasters have been slashing their outlooks for the EU maize harvest as worsening drought and successive heatwaves in major producing countries such as France, Romania and Hungary have strained maize plants during their crucial summer ...

The development of new, cleaner steelmaking technology is helping to ease concerns about a predicted bottleneck in the iron ore supply chain. A new report from the The Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA), Solving Iron Ore Quality Issues for Low-Carbon Steel, examines a number of new innovations in the industry that could accelerate the switch from traditional blast furnace technology to lower-emissions Direct Reduced Iron (DRI)-based steelmaking. DRI does not use metallurgical coal, but currently relies on high quality DR-grade iron ore (above 67% purity), which is ...

Indonesian legislators on Tuesday pressed the government to tighten rules on domestic coal sales, amid concern that miners will choose to pay fines instead of meeting a requirement to sell a quarter of their output to local power generators. The parliamentary energy committee met during recess on Tuesday, fearing the world’s biggest thermal coal exporter was headed for a repeat of a domestic supply crisis late last year that saw exports banned for a few weeks in January, triggering panic among foreign buyers. Indonesia imposes a so-called Domestic Market Obligation ...

Base metals were set for weekly gains on Friday, as concerns about demand eased after softer-than-expected U.S. inflation data raised hopes of a less hawkish monetary policy. Lead led the weekly gains, with its three-month contract CMPB3 on the London Metal Exchange up 6.7% as of 0524 GMT. The contract hit its highest since June 9 at $2,2210 a tonne on Friday. LME copper CMCU3 gained 0.1% to $8,182 a tonne after having hit a six-week high in the previous session and was on track for a third weekly gain ...

China was far and away the top customer for U.S. food and ag exports, despite rising tensions between the nations and the still-unresolved trade war, according to government data released on Monday. Agricultural economist David Widmar said China was on track to break the record it set last year for purchases of American agricultural products. Halfway into the year, China was more than $2 billion ahead of Canada or Mexico in purchases of U.S. ag exports. The three nations routinely account for nearly half of ag exports. China was responsible ...

2022 has brought about a highly volatile environment across commodities markets. Inflation, which began during the pandemic and was exacerbated by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, has sent agriculture markets soaring. The prices of hogs, cattle, and poultry have all increased at a rate near or higher than their respective input costs. This has led to strong margins in the US and in most of the world. However, declining, and sometimes negative, margins are beginning to weigh on the livestock industry. Looking towards 2023, we expect a confluence of factors ...

Grain analysts have struggled to anticipate the U.S. government’s corn and soybean yields in past Augusts, but that does not necessarily mean their instincts about actual crop potential were wrong. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s August crop report, due on Friday at noon EDT (1600 GMT), is notorious for its surprising nature. It has been nine years since USDA’s August corn and soybean yields both fell within the pre-report range of analyst guesses. But stacked up against final yields, the government seems to have just as many problems in August. ...