Export Sales Mostly as Expected
- Corn sales, for the week ended 5/28/20, rebounded modestly from the previous week's poor sales of 16.8 million bushels to 25.1 million bushels.
- Sales of old-crop soybeans were the lowest in six weeks at 18.2 million bushels, down from the previous week's 23.7 million bushels.
- New crop wheat sales of 16.1 million bushels brought 2020/21 total commitments to 128 million bushels compared with 156 million last year.
- Cotton saw net sales reductions of 10,100 running bales for 2019/2020 primarily due to cancellations for Turkey, Vietnam, and Malaysia.
- FBN’s Take On What It Means For The Farmer: Corn sales were down 19% from the prior 4-week average, but were larger than the 10 million bushels per week average needed through the end of the marketing year in August in order to meet the USDA's 1,775 million bushel export projection. Similarly, soybean sales were lower for the week, but higher than the estimated 8.3 million bushels per week needed in order to reach the 1,675 million bushel forecast by the USDA. With the current pace of sales, it is unlikely USDA will change its old-crop export projections in next week’s report.
Argentina’s Crop Projections Unchanged
- The Buenos Aires Grain Exchange reported soybean harvest has nearly concluded at 98.6% complete.
- The soybean crop estimate was left unchanged at 49.5 million tonnes compared with the last USDA projection of 51 million tonnes.
- The exchange estimates corn harvest is 55.6% complete, and the crop production forecast was similar to the USDA at 50 million tonnes.
- Wheat planting jumped to 30% complete from 14.4% last week, and the total planted area estimate was unchanged from last week.
- FBN’s Take On What It Means For The Farmer: Corn harvest and wheat planting in Argentina are getting done in a timely fashion and there is little reason for the USDA to make changes to the outlooks there. However, with soybean harvest wrapping up there appears to be some room for the agency to trim the projection.
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