9/1/2020

Last night's crop ratings had corn rated 62% good/excellent, down 2 pts from last week but 1 pt better than trade expectations.  Soybeans dropped 3 pts to 66% good/excellent, equal to expectations.  The markets started out down 5-10 cents on both corn and beans on the overnight, but started to recover after a couple hours of trade.  By this morning's coffee break beans were trading higher and corn was back near unchanged.  We did have a couple export sales announced this morning, which were 596,000 metric ton of corn to China and 132,000 metric ton of beans to Unknown.  It is good to see the export sales continue to China as we are now into September.  Some parts of Iowa and Illinois got some rain today, but the driest parts of Iowa stay dry.  The forecast continues to look very cool and dry in the 6-10 and 8-14 day.  Basis continues to hold in there for new crop as farmer selling picked up on the move higher, but has since slowed back down.  Another move higher on the board could cause basis to widen out as harvest approaches.  I have not talked about rail freight much lately, but it is still very spendy for Sept thru March at this point as harvest approaches.