IARN — The U.S. Export Sales Report released by USDA Thursday morning for the week ending January 21st once again showed solid sales for corn and soybeans.
In the report, US corn exports were 1.8 million metric tons – up 29 percent from the previous week and 61 percent from the prior four-week average – while soybean exports totaled just over 2 million metric tons. Allendale commodities broker Greg McBride notes the majority of the soybean sales were new crop.
“Weekly sales were bullish for corn and soybeans,” McBride said. “They were neutral for meal, oil, and wheat. The only thing I would point out on this week’s report that would be mildly disappointing would be the old crop soybean sales. They were actually below estimations, but they were in line with last year and the five-year average. The new crop sales though at 1.5 million tons, bringing the total sales to over 2 million tons, looks fantastic. Corn at 1.8 million tons looks really good. And then we continue to see China coming in this week and buying corn from us as well.”
As good as this week’s report was, McBride says next week’s data should be even better as China has made several significant purchases of US corn. It was announced at 8 a.m. Thursday that China had bought another 1.7 million metric tons of corn for the 2020/2021 marketing year.
“We’re going to be looking for in the neighborhood of – just from China – 3.7-to-4 million metric tons,” McBride said. “Top that off with anything Mexico and Japan have done and you’ve got to believe that we’ll be somewhere north of 4.2 million metric tons of corn sales next week.”
The next U.S. Export Sales Report will be released on Thursday, February 4th.
Story courtesy of the Iowa Agribusiness Radio Network
