Corn and wheat also fall below prior week’s tally

Ben Potter, Senior editor

January 3, 2020

2 Min Read
AvigatorPhotographer/Getty Images

It’s the third day of 2020, but USDA is still wrapping up export sales data for 2019, with the agency’s latest weekly report covering December 20-26. There wasn’t a lot of bullish data to digest, unfortunately, as soybeans fell to a marketing-year low, with corn and wheat also noticeably down last week. Grain prices spilled into the red following the news.

Soybean export sales of 12.2 million bushels set a new marketing-year low for 2019/20 after dropping 55% below the prior weeks’ tally and 66% below the prior four-week average. Analysts were expecting a more robust tally, with a range of estimates between 12.9 million and 38.6 million bushels. China accounted for nearly half of the total, with 5.9 million bushels. Bangladesh, Vietnam, Spain and Japan rounded out the top five.

Soybean export shipments fared better, with 39.6 million bushels. That was 7% better than the prior week’s total but still 20% below the prior four-week average. China took 15.4 million bushels, with Bangladesh, Mexico, Vietnam and Pakistan rounding out the top five.

Soymeal and soyoil exports were also disappointing last week, with 94,700 metric tons and 1,900 MT, respectively.

Corn export sales were also down 15% week-over-week, landing 43% below the prior four-week average after reaching 20.9 million bushels. That was within the range of analyst guesses of 11.8 million to 30.5 million bushels. Mexico and Japan led all destinations, as they often do, accounting for 9.4 million and 6.8 million bushels, respectively. Colombia, the Dominican Republic and Jamaica filled out the top five.

Corn export shipments were for 17.6 million bushels, which climbed 35% above the prior week’s tally but still fell 14% below the prior four-week average. Mexico, Japan, Colombia, Guatemala and the Dominican Republic represented the bulk of the total.

Wheat export sales saw the biggest weekly decline, tumbling 56% to 11.5 million bushels, which was also 46% below the prior four-week average. Analyst guesses ranged between 9.2 million and 29.4 million bushels. Indonesia was the top destination, with 2.6 million bushels. Another 750,000 bushels were reported for 2020/21 delivery to Italy and Nicaragua.

Wheat export shipments were also down 33% from a week ago and 18% below the prior four-week average, with 12.5 million bushels. Japan, Indonesia, South Korea, Italy and Taiwan represented the top five destinations.

Read a full rundown of last week’s USDA export sales highlights.

About the Author(s)

Ben Potter

Senior editor, Farm Futures

Senior Editor Ben Potter brings two decades of professional agricultural communications and journalism experience to Farm Futures. He began working in the industry in the highly specific world of southern row crop production. Since that time, he has expanded his knowledge to cover a broad range of topics relevant to agriculture, including agronomy, machinery, technology, business, marketing, politics and weather. He has won several writing awards from the American Agricultural Editors Association, most recently on two features about drones and farmers who operate distilleries as a side business. Ben is a graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism.

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