In the overnight session corn was mostly steady up 1/2 a cent, soybeans were up 5 3/4 cents and wheat in Chicago traded down 1 1/2 cents. Today we will most likely continue to see fallout from the Prospective Plantings report which was more bullish for soybeans and more negative for corn. Some buying interest has appeared in the overnight when a South Korean company announced they will be purchasing 140,000 metric tons of corn in an international tender and the Japan’s Ministry of Agriculture saying it will seek 120,000 metric tons of feed wheat and 200,000 metric tons of feed barley for September delivery.
Corn acreage surprised the market with 89.199 million acres compared to market expectations of around 88.7 million acres. Last year 90.6 million acres was planted for corn. The report showed soybean acres at 84.635 million acres compared to expectations of around 85.9 million acres and up .935 million acres from last year.
Quarterly grain stocks also showed more corn on hand as of March 1st compared to expectations. Corn stocks were reported at 7.745 billion bushels compared to expectations of 7.609 billion bushels. Soybean stocks were 1.334 billion bushels, 12 million bushels below expectations of 1.346 billion bushels. Wheat ending stocks were also lower than expected with 1.124 billion bushels reported as of March 1st compared to expectations of 1.140 billion bushels expected.
Showers look to provide some opportunity for moisture in the Nebraska/Kansas border and provide better chances next week across Oklahoma, Kansas and Colorado. However, despite the opportunity for precipitation it is still unlikely that the moisture will provide meaningful relief to the core drought throughout the plains. More rains were seen across Europe, Ukraine and Northwest Russia yesterday with Eastern Europe and Russia expecting continued precipitation throughout the rest of the week helping to relieve the dry conditions that have been concerning wheat traders recently.
