Fundamentally Speaking

In its last feed outlook, the USDA noted that despite a downward revision to 2024/25 marketing year supplies, implied U.S. corn exports are off to a strong start as through October 10, U.S. corn export inspections exceeded 2023 volumes by 19 percent.

This is noteworthy considering Argentina's corn export prices are now the cheapest of the U.S.'s main competitors in the global market, with the United States remaining competitive with Brazil.

Though U.S. corn export sales and inspections volumes to China are sluggish, this has been offset at least so far by heightened year-over-year demand for U.S. corn by other major export destinations like Japan, Colombia, and Mexico.

USDA is indicating that the U.S. will maintain strong corn exports heading into 2024/25 and as a result, the 2024/25 U.S. corn export forecast was raised by 25 million bushels (mb) this month to 2.325 billion bushels (bb) in the October WASDE report.

Along these lines this chart shows U.S. corn export sales and shipments in million bushels as of the second week in October on the left-hand axis and those figures as a percent of the October WASDE projection on the right-hand axis.

The figures in the yellow rectangles are the percent final exports exceeded the October WASDE export projection.

This year through the second week of October, the U.S. has sold 782.2 mb for the 2024/25 marketing year which began Sep 1 which is 23% better than the year ago 636.7 mb and that is 33.6% of the October WASDE projection, above the year ago 31.4% and above the 10-year average of 33.2% though below the 20-year average of 35.1%.

Note that USDA is only seeing our exports up 1.2% from the year ago 2.292 bb but U.S. corn exports really accelerated the final part of the 2023/24 season as that final export figure was 13.2% above the October 2023 export estimate of 2.050 bb.

That was the fourth largest increase in exports from the October WASDE to the final figure since the 2000/01 marketing year.

Perhaps the same thing will happen this year for even though the U.S. corn stocks-to-use ratio is the highest since the 2019/20 season, the global stocks/use ratio the lowest since the 2013/14 marketing year.

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