Tides rolling back in
It would appear that as the tide began to return yesterday, a few of the boats furthest away from shore began to rise again, and as it swooped in further overnight, even those stuck deeper in the mire have found a bit of buoyancy. It certainly did not hurt that they have also been provided with a supply of weak U.S. Dollar pitch to plug up some of the leaks that have sprung as of late, but that may be a temporary patch at best. This current wave does not appear to have the force of some of the previous tidal swings over the past few months, but considering a few of them reached tsunami intensity, there was not much left to wipe out in the low-laying areas anyway.
Corn planting progress was a bit slower than some had anticipated, but at 80%, complete, we remain well ahead of the average pace of 68%. Emergence stood at 41%, which is pretty much the same as last year and is 5% ahead of average. Bean planting moved forward nearly 20%, reaching 61% complete. As with corn, this is well ahead of the 5-year average of 37%. Emergence stood at 20% compared with the average 12%. Cotton planting reached 38%, a few percentage points behind both the average and last year, and sorghum increased just 5% to reach 27% complete. Spring wheat planting is now 85% complete, and winter wheat conditions slipped 1% to 48% good/excellent.
We have another in the series of Chinese corn purchases announced this morning. This time they have confirmed 1.36 MMT, bring the recent run of buying up to 8.16 MMT or 321 million bushels. A million-metric ton here and a million-metric ton there, and pretty soon, you are talking about real quantities.
Raindrops are still few and far between in Brazil, but the outlook does call for some improvement in the weeks ahead. If they are fortunate, it should at least stabilize the deterioration of the safrinha corn. The 2021 bean harvest is pretty well wrapped up, and farmers have continued to be aggressive sellers, taking advantage of record-high price levels. Bean harvest in Argentina has climbed to just over 70% complete, and corn harvest almost 25%. Nevertheless, both continue to lag historical averages.
On the economic front, we find that April housing starts were down 9.5% to 1.569 million units. Economists were only looking for a decrease of 2.2%. Redbook also released U.S. Retail Sales numbers for the first two weeks of May, which were up 12.6%. At first blush, that sounds encouraging but as I have commented previously, we will be witnessed several months of distorted numbers in light of what was happening in the U.S. and the rest of the world a year ago.
