1/29/2024

Jan 29, 2024


The market offered little to get excited about on Monday.  The only fresh headline we had was soybean imports into the U.S. starting a couple months earlier than usual but it was enough for the managed money crowd to go forward with another round of shorting grains and grain spreads.  After tightening to a nickel carry, the March:May soybean spread is back out to 10 cents within a couple sessions.  We also saw a fresh round of 8-month lows on most active soybean contracts.  Weekly export inspection totals were mid-range for both corn and soybeans with 902k tonnes of corn and 890k tonnes of soybeans shipped last week.  Soybean shipment pace slipped further and is now 68 million bushels behind the USDA target versus 53 million bushels behind the prior week.  Corn shipment pace added a little surplus, now 18 million bushels ahead of their required pace versus 17 million last week.  There was some corn export business done last week and corn has a decent shot at hitting the USDA forecast but the concerning part for corn is that while our futures market continues to drive lower, basis has not improved.

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Aug 12, 2025
The USDA report today didn't treat the corn market very well.  Both corn acres and yield were higher the result has corn carryout over 2.1 billion bushels.  Corn yield was pegged at 188.8 bpa vs an estimate of 184.29 bpa.  How high is 188.8?  Well…the previous record was 179.3.  Planted corn acres were put at 97.3 million.  Total corn production is estimated at 16.742 billion bushels, which is 763 million more than the report estimates.
May 12, 2025
News broke Sunday that the USA and China have agreed to ease tensions and lower tariffs.  The US is lowering tariffs on Chinese goods from 145% to 30%.  China is lowering their import tariffs from 125% to 10%.  Talks will resume in the coming weeks.  This news had stocks, grains and oil higher overnight. Then of course we had a USDA grain report come out at 11:00 this morning.  That was also a bit friendly.
Mar 31, 2025
USDA reported corn planting acres at 95.326 million acres of corn, which would be up a little more than 5% from 2024's final number and the second highest March figure of the last ten years behind only 2020's estimate of 96.99 mil acres.  US corn stocks as of March 1st were seen at 81.51 billion bushels, which was exactly what the trade had expected and was down just over 2% from March 1 of 2024.  USDA said farmers intended to plant 83.495 million acres of soybeans, which would be down about 4% from last year and was just a hair smaller than what the trade was looking for.  March 1 soybean stocks were pegged at 1.91 billion bu's, which again was nearly exactly as the trade had expected, and was up 3.5% compared to March 1, 2024.