Fundamentally Speaking

A smaller Brazilian crop, reduced Ukrainian exports, a depreciating dollar, and steady buying by Mexico are some of the reasons U.S. corn exports this year are about 35% ahead of the 2022-23 season tally.

Meanwhile a very-large incoming U.S. corn crop along with lower forecasted prices is why USDA upped the new-crop 2024-25 export projection by 75 million bushels (mb) in the August WASDE report to 2.30 billion bushels (bb), up 50 mb from this year's total.

Still, the early buying pace is one of the slowest in years when measured as a percent of the WASDE estimate.

The accompanying chart shows old-crop corn sales and shipments on the left-hand axis as a percent of the August old-crop export estimate, while new-crop sales as a percent of the August new-crop export estimate are plotted on the right-hand axis; both are as of the third week in August. The figures in the yellow boxes are the change in the old-crop corn projection from the August WASDE to the final figures in million bushels.

As of last week's export sales report, the U.S. has sold 2.202 bb of corn; of that, 2.043 bb has shipped. Respectively, these are 97.8% and 90.8% of the old-crop projection of 2.250 bb. Both of these are below 25-year average paces of 101.5% and 93.8%. The current shipping pace actually is the fourth lowest going all the way back to 2000.

As for new-crop sales, which stand at 312 mb, that is 13.6% of current 2024/25 export projection of 2.30 bb and below the 25-year average of 15.8% and tied for the third lowest percent of sales at this time of year since 2006.

With Chinese imports of U.S. corn continuing to be rather sluggish, there has been talk USDA was perhaps a little too aggressive in its export projections, so this will be something to monitor.

(c) Copyright 2024 DTN, LLC. All rights reserved.