Trade Expectations for USDA’s May WASDE Report
- Along with a 2019/20 update, USDA issues their first official 2020/21 balance sheet projections.
- Old-crop corn stocks, on average, are expected to be 2,224 million bushels versus 2,092 million issued last month.
- New crop corn stocks are forecast to grow to 3,389 million bushels.
- The old crop bean carryout is seen at 488 million bushels compared with 480 million in April.
- Expectations for new crop bean carryout are at 430 million bushels.
- 2019/20 wheat stocks are expected to be nearly unchanged at 969 million bushels, and falling to 814 million in the upcoming season.
FBN’s Take On What It Means: The US will need to export more than double the amount of soybeans that were shipped over the last four months of the marketing year last year to meet this year’s estimate. Corn stocks are seen increasing this year and becoming burdensome next year. Wheat supplies are expected to fall modestly in the US next year, allowing much smaller room for any production problems that might creep up.
Export Sales Mostly as Expected
- Corn sales, for the week ended 4/30/20, were 30.5 million bushels, towards the lower end of market expectations.
- The 24.0 million bushels of soybean sold last week were at the bottom of market expectations.
- Old crop wheat sales were 9.0 million bushels, which should allow the USDA's 985 million bushel export projection to be met.
- Net sales of 370,300 bales of upland cotton were down 15 percent from the previous week, but were noticeably higher than the prior 4-week average.
FBN’s Take On What It Means: Bean sales will need to maintain a rapid pace of approximately 18.5 million bushels per week to reach the 1,775 million bushels projected by the USDA. For corn, on Thursday, exporters reported the sales of 14.6 million bushels of old crop and 12.4 million bushels of new crop corn, which will be reflected in the next report. The export outlook is much more appealing now for corn than it was four months ago.
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