IARN — The U.S. Department of Agriculture released its weekly U.S. Export Sales Report on Friday.
Allendale commodity broker Greg McBride said that old crop sales were surprisingly good this week yet again.
“Well, weekly exports were neutral,” McBride said. “They all fell within the range of estimates for both new crop and old crop combined. The big surprise this week, once again, is very good old crop sales, or, at least, better-than-expected old crop sales, for corn. We came in at 531,000 tons. We were looking for somewhere between cancellations of 200,000 and maybe a buying of 400,000, so we exceeded that expectation.”
“The big thing to look at here is that China was actually a buyer of about 160,000 tons on this report,” McBride said. “That goes against what we’d been hearing, which was that there was going to be cancellations posted from China.”
McBride explained why there was a significant drop from China’s purchasing spree last week.
“Well, we just didn’t see them come into it,” McBride said. “We’ve had some phone conversations regarding the trade deal that we have with them. I think a lot of that was posturing and buying ahead of that just to show good faith, but we haven’t really seen them active on the soybean side of things here lately either. They did show up in the new crop soybean sales- only for 10,000 metric tons- but at least it is something getting their name in there a little bit.”
McBride clarified that there’s little to worry about since there’s still a long time until the end of the marketing year for old crop.
Story courtesy of the Iowa Agribusiness Radio Network
Photo courtesy of Southeast Farm Press
