4/6/2022

A rare quiet day of sorts in corn and soybean trade with virtually all grain and associated commodities trading weak/lower on the day with the exception being oats.  Today provided a good opportunity for us to review our markets.  We started off this morning with the USDA announcing the sale of 132,000 tonnes of soybeans for delivery to China in the 2021/22 marketing year followed by the weekly ethanol numbers showing output down 33k bpd to 1.0 million bpd and stocks off 626k barrels to 25.9 million bbls.  Estimates of the total crop sown this year in Ukraine still have a wide range, anywhere from 25% to 80% of the 2021 crop, but everyone seems to agree that regardless of the size, Ukrainian exports will be drastically lower.  This is most important to the global corn and wheat trade.  Combining this along with a drought stricken first crop of soybeans in Brazil, it appeared as though the U.S. would be the only shop in town.  Almost as fast as that story came together, we are now starting to see/hear rumors of a record soybean crop in Brazil's largest soy producing state (Mato Grasso) and that the Brazil safrihna corn crop is expected to be around 15% larger than last year's.  The USDA shocked the market with last week's huge acre swap between corn and soybeans in the planting intentions report and just two days from now, we will get our April WASDE numbers.  Estimates show trade is expecting slight cuts to the U.S. ending stocks for corn and soybeans, a small bump in Brazil corn production and another trimming of Brazil soy production.

Thirteen consecutive higher closes for the Dec 23 corn contract.