July 18 Morning Ag Commentary

by Steve Freed,

Grain calls are lower. SX is down 3 cents and near 8.97. CZ is down 5 cents and near 4.36. WZ is down 6 cents and near 5.10.  Forecast of better US Midwest weather/temps next week and a lack of a US and China trade deal offers resistance. Crude is higher.

News wire item had USDA’s Risk Management Agency (RMA) has a running tally of prevent-plant acres. Usually reliable sources detail prevent-plant (PP) acres for corn as of early July were 7 million to 8 million acres, while soybeans were 2 million to 3 million acres, with the total PP tally for all crops put at 12.5 million acres. Final amounts are expected to go higher. The USDA earlier said total PP acres would likely go over 10 million acres, and that appears to be the case based on internal USDA numbers.

Drive down from Chicago to C IL yesterday was interesting. Looks like about 5-10 pct of the crops did not get planted especially around the IL River. 10 pct of corn was pollination and look good. Most of the corn crop was belt high and 30 days late.  One private group has IL corn yield at 170 vs 210 last year. Will have to watch the crop all the way to maturity. All of the beans looked like double crop. Same private group has IL crop yield at 57 vs 65 last year. Doubt it will make 50. Most are worried about lack of canopy.

Wire story reports progress toward a U.S.-China trade deal has stalled while the Trump administration determines how to address Beijing’s demands that it ease restrictions on Huawei Technologies Co. No face-to-face meetings have taken place and none has been scheduled since President Trump and President Xi Jinping of China met last month in Japan and agreed to resume talks.

Weekly US wheat export sales are estimated near 200-400 mt, 350-800 mt corn and 100-700 mt soybeans.

The Agriculture Ministry said on Tuesday it saw Russia’s grain crop rising as high as 150.3 million tonnes by 2035 in an “optimistic scenario” as it outlined a draft strategy to invest billions of dollars in grain infrastructure and logistics. Russia, the world’s largest wheat exporter, would produce 140 million tonnes of grain annually by 2035 in the draft strategy’s base-case scenario, while exporting 55.9 million tonnes, the ministry said. This year, the grain crop will total 118 million tonnes with exports for the 2019/2020 marketing season at 45 million tonnes, according to the ministry.

The 6 to 10 day forecast for the Midwest has a front pushing through the region early next week bringing moderate to light amounts of rainfall to around 70% of the area. The rest of the week looks quiet—temps look to cool off into mostly the 80’s with the front.

The 11 to 16 day period for the Midwest still has a northwest flow that brings average to below average precip and average temps to the region.

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2019-07-18T13:20:55+00:00 July 18th, 2019|