* Iowa Secretary of Agriculture, Mike Naig told Reuters that the coronavirus outbreak is not expected to disrupt or delay the spring planting season in the US.

He told the news service that “as long as our workforce holds up, we’re going to have a largely normal spring”.

* ARC Mercosul on Friday reported Brazil’s soybean harvesting at 70% complete.

The agribusiness consultancy said that this was higher than the historical average of 68.5% for the period.

It added that harvesting in Mato Grosso, the country’s main soybean-growing state, was virtually complete.

* Russia’s VTB bank announced on Monday that it has bought half of the Taman grain terminal in the Russian part of the Black Sea for $65m from Ukraine’s Kernel.

* Ukraine’s APK-Inform reported on Monday that shipments of sunflower oil from sea ports reached 2.878m tonnes for the 2019-20 season so far.

That is up 72.2% from the 1.671m tonnes recorded for the same period during the 2018-19 season.

Exports for the week March 14-20 dropped to 69,000 tonnes from 132,000 tonnes a week earlier.

* APK-Inform also reported that sea port grain exports for the March 14-20 week were at 1.178m tonnes, up from the previous week’s 933,000 tonnes.

Wheat exports were at 284,000 tonnes, up from 170,000 tonnes.

Corn totalled 835,000 tonnes versus 665,000 tonnes a week earlier.

Grain exports have reached 43.4m tonnes so far for the 2019-20 season, up from last season’s 31.5m tonnes for the same period.

* According to Germany’s agriculture and consumer protection ministry, a case of H5N8 bird flu was found on a turkey farm in the country’s Lower Saxony state.

All poultry on the farm was slaughtered and the area placed under quarantine.

This follows another case of H5N8 reported in the country last week on a poultry farm in Bad Lausick near Leipzig.