5/17/2021

Corn and soybeans both finish Monday mixed with the front month firming after good weekly export inspection figures.  Corn inspections were seen at 1.892 mln tonnes last week, towards the upper end of expectations.  Soybeans and wheat inspections both out performed estimates with 309k tonnes of beans and 659k tonnes of wheat inspected.  The USDA had more 8am sales announcements of new crop corn this morning with 1.7mln tonnes to China and 128k tonnes to Mexico.  That brings the total US new crop corn sales to china to 268 mln bushels, that we know of.  April soybean crush numbers came in well below the trade estimates, with 160.31 mln bushels crushed vs the average estimate of 168.74 mln bu.  Throughout Thursday and Friday last week, funds liquidated an estimated 75,000 corn and 43,000 soybean positions.  The market was feeling some pressure from what is expected to be another vault forward in planting progress in this week's crop progress report and the increasing chances of good precipitation across the corn belt over the next two weeks.  New crop values may struggle to achieve big gains in the short term, especially corn, with many analysts feeling that the USDA may have undershot the corn acreage number by 3 to 4 million acres.  Locally, our forecast looks like we're having a short spring and heading straight for summer.