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U.S. grain export woes continue

U.S. grain exports are continuing to struggle as the current marketing year nears its final month.

Old crop U.S. corn sales most recently hit back-to-back marketing year lows while old crop soybean sales have reached marketing year lows three weeks in a row with more cancelations than sales the last two weeks.

The head of the University of Missouri’s Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute, Pat Westhoff, tells Brownfield a lot of recent export cancelations have come from unknown destinations which is likely China.

“I do expect that China’s going to want to continue to import a significant amount of grain this next year for both corn and other grains,” he said. “But not the kind of robust growth we saw a couple years ago.”

And he said the recent drop in commodity prices could make trading partners hold off on purchases.

“We had prices that appeared to be declining there for a bit, you know,” Westhoff said. “People are hoping prices will decline further and they get a better price by just waiting a bit longer. The bump up in prices this past week may change the psychologies a little bit, but we’ll see.”

Westhoff said U.S. exporters will get a better snapshot of the global market when more is known about crop production and availability out of the Black Sea region.

Westhoff made his comments on Brownfield’s recent Weekly Commodity Market Update.