USDA released its February World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates report. Mac Marshall, vice president of market intelligence for the United Soybean Board, says he was watching South America’s crop estimate.

“The Brazilian harvest is continuing along at a pretty nice clip, ahead of the five-year pace and ahead of last year. Brazilian soybeans were cut from 157 million metric tons to 156. USDA has issued a couple of consecutive months of cuts. I think it’s worth noting that local market observers, including Conab in Brazil, have the estimates still lower. Most important to remember is that Argentina has come back significantly relative to last year’s trying to crop down there, so there’s a large supply in aggregate coming out of South America.”

The report predicts less international demand for soybeans.

“On the international side, something’s weighing on the markets. And then domestically, it’s February. There’s not a crop in the ground for beans. The focus is really on demand-side adjustments on the domestic balance sheet, and what we saw was a 35 million bushel decrease in the export forecast for this year.”

The good news is domestic demand for soybeans will continue growing in 2024.

“Let’s also remember what’s unfolding here domestically, which I think is just as important as anything else. We’re exporting fewer whole beans because we’re crushing a lot more domestically. We’ve got four straight months of record crush for each of those months since the start of the meal and oil marketing year on October one. More plants are coming online later this year, so that crushed number domestically I think is going to continue to stay strong and continue to grow. So, even as we see that export number come back a little bit on soybeans, let’s remember that we’re crushing a lot of meal and on pace for record meal exports this year on the heels of a new record last year.”

Keep up with the latest news from the United Soybean Board at unitedsoybean.org and Wednesday mornings at 10 a.m. Eastern time on RFD-TV.