Grain > Commentary > 3-18-2021

3/18/2021

Mar 18, 2021

3/18/2021
Another sale announcement with China purchasing 696,600 tonnes of corn for 2020/2021, bringing the three-day total to 121 million bushels but it wasn't enough to spark buying interest from the fund and spec money.  Commodity markets all around were strongly lower today, with the stand-out being crude oil trading 7.5% lower, pushing it below $60/bbl for the first time in two weeks.  The recent precipitation in US growing regions over the past week was realized on the updated USDA drought monitor released today.  Along with some rain in Argentina, this applied some sell pressure to the grains.  It seems strange that we've had 3 big grain sales to our biggest export customer this week and the market has reacted negatively.  Net export sales for the week were above expectations for corn at 986k tonnes.  Bean sales were on target at 202k tonnes but were also evidence that Brazil is becoming the preferred source for soybeans.  Today's trade volume was some of the lightest we have seen this calendar year and, with the market friendly news, it's tough to agree that the board needed to be beaten up this bad in one day.  May beans closed the day at 1392'2, looking to test support of the 50-day moving average at 1388'2.
 

Read More News

1/12/2026
Jan 12, 2026
Well, the USDA report had a bit of a surprise today and not in a good way.  Not only did they increase the 2025 corn yield, from 186.0 to 186.5, they also increased Harvest Acres from 90 million to 91.3 million.  That raised the total corn production to 17.021 billion, up an additional 269 million bushels from their previous estimate.  U.S. Ending Stocks are now estimated at 2.227 bbu, vs. 2.209 in Dec.  Report trade guesses were at 1.97 bbu.
11/14/2025
Nov 14, 2025
It was USDA report day today and overall, it was bearish for both corn and beans.  Corn Yield was only reduced by .7 bpa down to 186 bpa.  The market was expecting closer to 184 bpa.  Corn production is estimated at 16.752 billion vs 16.814 billion in September.  They raised exports 100 million, which is debatable, but possible.  Ending stocks on corn were estimated at 2.154 billion bushels, which is up 44 million from September and about 29 million more than the market expected. 
9/12/2025
Sep 12, 2025
USDA report day.  Corn and beans were trading higher pre-report on thoughts of a reduction to yields.  Well....we got what we were thinking but the USDA decided to throw a twist into the mix.  The 25/26 corn yield decreased slightly less than expected by 2.1 bu to 186.7 bpa, but they gave us the largest planted acreage shift on this report in at least the last 20 years (+1.4 mil acres) spurred an increase in production to 16,814 mbu.  25/26 ending stocks were slightly lowered by 7 mbu to 2,110 mbu.