Both corn and soybean sales were strong this week, but those strong export sales were overshadowed by market pressure from the wars overseas as well as the weather here in the U.S. Allendale commodity broker Greg McBride gave a breakdown of the corn export data.
“Yeah, corn sales were very good. This is new crop. We were looking somewhere between a half million and a million tons. Came in just over a million tons at 1.06. Total sales for the week were 1.42. Obviously, since we are so close, we’re within a month of the end of the marketing year. We’re not necessarily paying attention to those old crop sales. We’re really paying attention more to the shipment, and shipments are doing very well. So, continue to watch for new crop sales. Like I said, very good this week. So, no concerns about the export demand for corn.”
McBride said it was a similarly positive report for the soybean markets.
“Sales at 300,000 tons for the old crop. Again, it’s a shipping situation, not necessarily a sales situation. On the new crop side of things, we were looking for somewhere between 700,000 tons and a million tons. We got 1.33 million tons, so very good sales. This is what we’ve been talking about as far as we need to continue to see consistent, consistently good new crop sales, especially from China, or purchases by China, at this time of the year. This is when they do typically buy for that September, October, November delivery, pre-booking those sales or those purchases.”
McBride said China is also doing a good job of keeping up with its end of the trade agreement so far.
“We had another flash though this morning of 132,000 tons to China. That’s two cargos. That brings us, with what showed up in the USDA report or the FAS report this morning, to about six million tons of soybeans for the new crop between China and unknown purchases. Where they’re both really kind of just sitting right at that three-million-ton level each. So, overall, doing what they’ve said they were going to do. We need, obviously, that consistently to continue. Otherwise, the market will start to fade away at this because if they don’t keep up a certain pace, the market’s going to say, ‘Well, they’re not doing what they say,’ and then we start to talk about some of the other reasons why things are not being done. Whether that’s the conversation about them helping Iran with rockets or shoulder-launch rockets or other trade deals with the president going over to China here in, I think, in September.”