While USDA punted on South America production estimates for this year they did make some interesting changes to last year’s production which produced some revisions to global carryover.USDA also left U.S. corn and soybean ending stocks unchanged begging the question of when the agency will recognize the strong demand, at least for corn.
USDA left U.S. ending stocks on soybeans at 380 million bu. and corn at 1.54 billion bu. both unchanged in the March WASDE.
Yet, export sales and inspections have been pacing ahead of last year, especially on corn.
So why hasn’t USDA made any revisions in the last two reports?Are they waiting on tariff developments? Because USDA noted they did not account for that in this report.
Brian Splitt, AgMarket.Net says, “So, I think the USDA is just waiting to get through the quarterly stock report and the planting intentions that we have at the end of the month and then they’re going to then adjust some of the domestic balance sheet numbers for demand on the April wise to report once we get the stocks.”
However, USDA did adjust global balance sheets.
The agency left new crop South American production estimates unchanged for corn and soybeans, yet lowered China corn imports 2 million tons and world corn carryover by 1.4 million.
Plus, the agency finally made a net cut to South America’s old crop corn production.
Splitt says, So, it’s kind of comical that now here we are a year later, and we’re starting to see the size of last year’s South American crop revised lower after the fact, but a total of three million tons lower in Brazilian corn, yet up a million in the Argentine corn. So we had a net reduction of two million tons overall for the old crop South American production.”
USDA also cut global soybean carryover by nearly 3 million metric tons with lower stocks in China and Argentina but raised China’s soybean imports 2 million.
He says, “You’re changing Chinese imports here. So, interestingly, you have a report where nothing happened on the production side of things for South America in the middle of their growing season Yet global stocks were reduced because of either last year or or some revisions within China So the world just did get a little bit tighter.”
That is with the exception of wheat, where USDA raised global ending stocks 2.5 million metric tons and surprisingly did not lower Russian production, which was bearish.
