Grain > Commentary > 3-19-2021

3/19/2021

Mar 19, 2021

3/19/2021
Yesterday's widespread sell-off in commodities left a lot of people scratching their heads.  It seems like a laundry list of everything market negative combined to create a perfect storm.  The meeting between China and the US started off on a sour note, the dollar index rallied again, grain in S. America is a discount to the US, rain in Argentina and the US corn belt, ASF in china, and some seasonal sell pressure ahead of planting season.  Trade went home, slept on it, and this morning said, "Yesterday never happened."  We gained back almost everything lost on Thursday, with nearby corn and soybeans both finishing only 1 cent below Wednesday's market close.  Week-to-week on the nearby, corn was 18 higher and beans 3 higher.  USDA announced 800,000 tonnes of corn to China for 2020/21 delivery this morning.  That's a 4-day sales total of 153 million bushels all to China.  ProFarmer released their estimates for the planting intentions report with corn on the higher end at 93.4 million acres and soybeans on the lower end at 88.9 million acres.  Based on the increase in demand for fertilizer, this would appear to be a more reasonable estimate than what the USDA gave us earlier this month.  Tomorrow is the first day of Spring!
 

Read More News

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
Corn picks up 10 cents and soybeans improve just over 25 cents on the week to go into the holiday weekend on a positive note.  Soybean export sales have picked up the pace in a big way.  At the end of last week, sales...