Grain > Commentary > 5-4-2023

5/4/2023

May 04, 2023

While today's trade may look negative on the surface, the lower price action in corn and soybeans was a healthy pull back after Wednesday's solid gains.  Wheat enjoyed modest gains while corn and soybeans made nice recoveries off of their lows and then traded steady.  We did see a couple of the front contracts flip green later in the session.  The weekly export sales report gave us another warning shot on corn demand.  For the first time in over 20 years, the month of April had a week of net cancellations for corn with 316k tonnes net canceled last week.  Soybean sales were within expectations at 290k tonnes sold.  With the May installment of the USDA WASDE due out next Friday, it will be interesting to see how the USDA handles the current state of corn demand.  It's no secret China is purchasing corn from Brazil who has a readily available supply.  The current state of Brazil's safrinha crop also remains a non-issue with conditions mostly ideal for the past 5 months.  In terms of marketing advice, the Dec:Mar corn spread has been giving us opportunities to roll at 10 cent premiums.  If you have HTAs on for December, not a bad place to start!
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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.
3/11/2025
Mar 11, 2025
The monthly USDA WASDE report was today and it was about as boring as it can get.  The USDA took the month off leaving corn and beans carryouts unchanged.  Corn remains at 1.540 billion bushels and beans at 380 million bushels.  World ending stocks were slightly lowered on both corn and beans.  World corn was pegged at 288.94 million tonnes vs 290.3 million tonnes previously.  World beans were pegged at 121.4 million tonnes vs 124.3 million tonnes previously.  All of the South American crop production estimates were also left unchanged.  
8/30/2024
Aug 30, 2024
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