7/12/2021

With the June planted acres and quarterly grains stocks reports and the July WASDE report all in the rearview mirror, we are now entering the dog days of summer for the markets.  Let's review what we know up to today: biggest thing driving the market in any direction is warm weather and persistent dryness in the Western corn belt while the Eastern corn belt appears to be in good shape going into tasseling/pollination.  USDA added 1.6 mln acres of corn planted in the June 30 report and the consensus in the industry is another possible 1.5 mln corn acres not accounted for, yet.  Soybean acres are at bare minimum this year and the new crop ending stocks of 155 million bushels leaves an extremely small margin for error.  What will North Dakota's soybean crop be?  With today's small 25 million bushel cut to the 2020/21 corn carryout down to 1.082 and soybean carryout unchanged, it’s obvious that we will not be running out of either commodity this year.  With the USDA taking away 5 bushels off the average yield for US wheat this year, they are acknowledging that there is likely a large issue with this year’s Spring Wheat crop.  As of late, trade has been suspicious of that with the spring wheat board currently at levels not seen since 2017.  Strong .9" of rain in Murdock Friday night into Saturday morning with bigger totals south towards highway 40.