3/3/2023

Corn and soybeans continued their recovery on Friday.  After trade held steady near unchanged during the overnight hours, 8:30 brought with it the beginning of today's climb back up the hill.  From the recent lows printed at the beginning of the week, corn has recovered around 20 cents and soybeans about 40 cents going into the weekend.  The USDA remains silent at 8 a.m. but enough business has been getting done this week that next week's weekly export sales report may provide some sort of indirect confirmation if we don’t see anything sooner.  Last week's net export sales were on the low end of expectations with 598k tonnes of corn and only 361k tonnes of soybeans.  At this point, it is probably safe to say that the U.S. soybean export program for 2022/23 is wrapping up.  Trade estimates for the March installment of the monthly USDA WASDE report are cutting some production out of Brazil.  We know it’s a record crop down there but the question is how big of a record.  It’s likely more than enough to replace any production losses in Argentina.