Grain > Commentary > 2-1-2024

2/1/2024

Feb 01, 2024

After two days of higher trade that looked like the start of a rally, the market could not get off the ground on Thursday.  Corn managed to stay above the prior day's low, finishing just 1 lower after gaining a nickel the previous session.  Soybeans were sharply lower, closing 13-19 cents lower and it appears that the March contract will, once again, look to test what support there is at the $12 level.  We did have the USDA confirm a sale at 8 a.m. this morning and it was for 206,834 tonnes of soybeans for delivery to Mexico during the 2023/24 marketing year.  In the weekly export sales report, corn came in near the high end of expectations with 1.207 mln tonnes sold last week.  The PNW market has been active the past two weeks so it would not be a surprise to see another solid number for corn on this report next week.  Soybean sales were a marketing year low with only 165k tonnes sold.  A bright spot on the report were sales for soybean meal which totaled 494k tonnes.  This was the second highest weekly total in over a year.  This also comes following 2-year lows in soybean meal futures.

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3/31/2025
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.
3/11/2025
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8/30/2024
Aug 30, 2024
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