Grain > Commentary > 3-19-2021

3/19/2021

Mar 19, 2021

3/19/2021
Yesterday's widespread sell-off in commodities left a lot of people scratching their heads.  It seems like a laundry list of everything market negative combined to create a perfect storm.  The meeting between China and the US started off on a sour note, the dollar index rallied again, grain in S. America is a discount to the US, rain in Argentina and the US corn belt, ASF in china, and some seasonal sell pressure ahead of planting season.  Trade went home, slept on it, and this morning said, "Yesterday never happened."  We gained back almost everything lost on Thursday, with nearby corn and soybeans both finishing only 1 cent below Wednesday's market close.  Week-to-week on the nearby, corn was 18 higher and beans 3 higher.  USDA announced 800,000 tonnes of corn to China for 2020/21 delivery this morning.  That's a 4-day sales total of 153 million bushels all to China.  ProFarmer released their estimates for the planting intentions report with corn on the higher end at 93.4 million acres and soybeans on the lower end at 88.9 million acres.  Based on the increase in demand for fertilizer, this would appear to be a more reasonable estimate than what the USDA gave us earlier this month.  Tomorrow is the first day of Spring!
 

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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.