Grains continued to grind lower overnight with soybeans moving into fresh 11-month lows.
In international news, Japan bought food quality wheat overnight in a usual tender bid. Of the 117,800 MT deal, the US garnered nearly 80,000 MT with the remainder going to Australia. Also, Philippine feed makers were in the market for 50,000 MT of South American soymeal. And, a South Korea feed group bought 65,000 MT of feed wheat, likely to come from the Black Sea region.
The International Grains Council raised its forecast for global grains consumption for 2017/18 on Thursday, signalling a bigger draw-down of world stocks than previously expected. The IGC, in its monthly report, revised its global grains consumption estimate for 2017/18 up by 7 MMT to 2.086 billion tonnes, just below the 2.087 billion forecast for 2016/17. The group attributed the increase to higher industrial consumption in maize-based ethanol in the United States and starch in China.
New-crop corn and bean sales for the US continue to be disappointing with USDA’s weekly report on Thursday showing no new deals. So far, 2017 new-crop corn sales have totaled 2.4 MMT vs 3.5 MMT for the same time last year, while soybeans are only 2.8 MMT currently for new-crop vs 3.6 last year at this time. Keep in mind USDA expects soybean exports in 2017/18 are expected to a record large 2.15 billion bushels, up 5% from this year. With disappointing pre-sales so far & heated competition from South America, that may be a difficult mark to hit.
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