Grain > Commentary > 4-4-2022

4/4/2022

Apr 04, 2022

4/4/2022
Opening calls for Sunday night were higher with corn and soybeans trading in the green for almost the entirety of both sessions after news of Russia purposefully attacking the ports in Odesa, Ukraine.  Odesa is a major exporting hub and early reports indicated significant damage that "may take years to repair."  The USDA made a very large corn sale announcement at 8 a.m. this morning of 1,084,000 tonnes for delivery to China; 676k tonnes in 2021/22 and 408k tonnes in 2022/23.  This is the single largest corn purchase by China since May 2021.  Weekly export inspections were on the strong side for corn and average for soybeans with 1.528 million tonnes of corn inspected for shipment and 737k tonnes of soybeans inspected for shipment.  Corn export shipment pace is now 11 million bushels behind the pace needed to meet the USDA forecast versus being short 34 million bushels the previous week.  This deficit started at more than 200 million bushels and has essentially disappeared.  Soybean export pace is now 58 million bushels behind the pace needed to meet the USDA forecast versus 62 million bushels the previous week.  Seasonal temps have been slow to rise in the north central region and trade will begin monitoring planting pace closely.  Modern high-speed equipment makes this less of an issue but the saying is "buy the rumor, sell the fact" and it may provide a premium rich marketing opportunity in the near future.

The December corn contract traded $7.00 for the first time since 2012.
corn-chart.jpg

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.