March WASDE reacts to Ukraine conflict

The USDA released its March WASDE (World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates) report Wednesday.

Jon Driedger is with LeftField Commodity Research.

"The biggest factor is what's going on in Ukraine and what does that mean for the grain shipments out of the region," he said. "From a USDA perspective, they lowered wheat exports out of both Russia and Ukraine. One of the things that we have to remember is the vast majority of the exports out of those countries move late summer, fall, early winter, so it wasn't a dramatic decrease in exports, because of the seasonal nature of that movement, but they did lower shipments out of that region and more exports out of Australia and India to partially make up for it, maybe some lower imports."

Driedger commented on the upcoming planting season.

"A lot of the Ukrainian crop is winter crops, things like mostly winter wheat, is most of the wheat that's grown. Their rapeseed or canola is largely winter crops and so those crops were planted last fall. They're major exporters of corn, of sunflowers. The conflict tends to happen more in urban areas but that doesn't mean there's not a lot of disruption and uncertainty about what this means for production going forward.