Grain Comments: 05-03-2023

Good morning:

The most-traded July corn contract hit its lowest since Jan ‘22 overnight, with the crop going in the ground across the Midwest this week; wheat continues to carve out multi-year lows with Russia finally coming to the table to discuss the Black Sea deal and its wheat undercutting the global market.

The Plains and Midwest were dry over the past 24 hours and remain so today, until the next system fires up in the SW belt tomorrow and moves though the Midwest up into the weekend; five-day totals look heaviest in Nebraska and surroundings, down into the southern belt and southern/southeastern U.S. However, most areas look wet immediately after that into the 6–10-day period as well, drier now for the 11–15-day time frame. Temperatures are now safely in the clear, above normal the rest of the week right up through mid-May.

Brazilian rains fell in the south yesterday and remain there through Sunday, with some dry conditions continuing north/northeast during the next ten days.

We are starting to see more interest in the market on the upcoming WASDE report. This is not uncommon as the May release is the most watched of the year as it contains the initial official new crop balance sheets. The average trade guess on corn numbers is for 92 million planted acres and a yield of 180.6 bushels per acre. Thoughts are this will give us a 2023 corn crop of 15.3 billion bu (bbu). Given current demand and projected changes trade believes new crop ending stocks will total 2.3 bbu, a sizable increase from this year. While this is possible, there will be several changes to the balance sheets that will change this number. The most noted is production which will require near perfect conditions all year. On soybeans trade is guessing we will seed 87.5 million acres and yield 52.7 bushels per acre. This is forecast to give us a crop of 4.5 bbu and ending stocks of 300 million bu (mbu). While this is up from this year it is still a rationing volume. Wheat balance sheets are expected to remain mostly unchanged from this year to next with possibly a 50 mbu increase to ending stocks to 650 mbu. One of the largest deciding factors on these carryout estimates is what we will see for carrying from this year and those estimates are increasing every day.

Have a great day!