This is the SFN Market Report with Brooks Schaffer of Palmetto Grain. Reach him at brooks@palmettograin.com or 843-540-4540.
Monsoon season in Brazil has now started in earnest with virtually all the major growing regions receiving another 2 to 3 inches of rain this week. Everyone down there is planting as fast as they can to make up for the late start. We expect planting pace to accelerate to allow planting to catch up to its historical average. Planting started late, but should finish on time. With the crop planted, a lot of the weather premium has been taken out of the bean market. I am thankful the market has not challenged the old lows. Corn and soybeans have managed to find some support and bring buying to the market despite the South American weather premium coming out of the market.
The strength in the corn and soybean market has been a bit surprising but very welcome. There are some interesting things going on in the US cash market right now. US harvest will wrap up very soon. Soybean harvest pace is the fastest in 14 years now and corn is flying as well. We have not had any rain in the Midwest to slow the combines down. With close to record crops and no breaks in harvest, we would expect storage to get full, cash markets to get weak and spreads to widen out. However that is not what we are seeing. We are seeing basis continue to appreciate in many markets for both corn and beans. Water is low in the Mississippi and rail performance has not been steller and yet we still see basis in many markets getting stronger. Exports have been phenomenal as well as domestic demand. This week we had the biggest export sale number on corn in three and a half years. Soybeans and wheat were also at the upper end of the range of expectations. We have seen almost daily sales announcements going all over the world for corn and beans. Domestic demand has remained very strong reflected by the NOPA crush and weekly ethanol crush numbers. Ethanol crush was up again this week and ethanol stocks were down. Harvest progress that comes out on Monday will be closely watched. It may be the last bit of the crop that does not fit and puts some pressure on the market but many are making the call that the harvest lows may be behind us.
Corn should find support through the year but beans are going to continue to be subject to the progress of the South American crop. China has been a big buyer of US beans in the last few weeks as their crush margins improve, but if the crop in Brazil is progressing along they will quickly cease buying US beans no matter who wins the election next month. If Brazil sees a weather issue going forward there is upside in beans but if they do not, there is still downside below.