Grain > Commentary > 4-7-2021

4/7/2021

Apr 07, 2021

4/7/2021
Corn was stronger as the calendar spreads signal a continuance of good domestic demand.  The weekly ethanol report showed a slight increase in production of 10,000 bbl/day along with inventory decreasing by 500k barrels.  After a couple days of firmly higher trade, soybeans and soybean oil took a breather today after the monthly exports report showed that soybean export pace had fallen back to the yearly averages.  With good export demand in corn and soybeans, along with crush demand in beans, the consensus in the market is that we are expecting to see a friendly report on Friday.  New reports of confirmed outbreaks of African Swine Fever in China have become more consistent lately, with the newest headline being a dead pig washed ashore in Taiwan testing positive for ASF.  China has a history of downplaying crisis inside its borders and it would be interesting to know how the pig ended up in the sea.  I'm sure there are no shortage of theories on that.  Big picture: everyone is leaning extremely bullish but commodity markets are not immune to events on the geo-political landscape.  Make sure you have a strategy in place to protect yourself.
 

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8/12/2025
Aug 12, 2025
The USDA report today didn't treat the corn market very well.  Both corn acres and yield were higher the result has corn carryout over 2.1 billion bushels.  Corn yield was pegged at 188.8 bpa vs an estimate of 184.29 bpa.  How high is 188.8?  Well…the previous record was 179.3.  Planted corn acres were put at 97.3 million.  Total corn production is estimated at 16.742 billion bushels, which is 763 million more than the report estimates.
5/12/2025
May 12, 2025
News broke Sunday that the USA and China have agreed to ease tensions and lower tariffs.  The US is lowering tariffs on Chinese goods from 145% to 30%.  China is lowering their import tariffs from 125% to 10%.  Talks will resume in the coming weeks.  This news had stocks, grains and oil higher overnight. Then of course we had a USDA grain report come out at 11:00 this morning.  That was also a bit friendly.
3/31/2025
Mar 31, 2025
USDA reported corn planting acres at 95.326 million acres of corn, which would be up a little more than 5% from 2024's final number and the second highest March figure of the last ten years behind only 2020's estimate of 96.99 mil acres.  US corn stocks as of March 1st were seen at 81.51 billion bushels, which was exactly what the trade had expected and was down just over 2% from March 1 of 2024.  USDA said farmers intended to plant 83.495 million acres of soybeans, which would be down about 4% from last year and was just a hair smaller than what the trade was looking for.  March 1 soybean stocks were pegged at 1.91 billion bu's, which again was nearly exactly as the trade had expected, and was up 3.5% compared to March 1, 2024.