Exports Surge In First Full Week of 2011
Wheat and corn sales beat estimates by a wide margin, surprising traders.
Bryce Knorr
Published: Jan 21, 2011
Hopes for U.S. export sales got a boost this morning, with strong totals noted across the board in the latest USDA summary. Net new bookings for corn and wheat were especially good, beating trade guesses by a wide margin.
Sales of wheat topped 42 million bushels, with around 10% of the total new crop. While sales to Turkey and Japan were previously reported by traders, the biggest buyer was unknown destinations.
USDA added icing to the cake by confirming the sale of another 5.5 million bushels of hard red winter wheat to Jordan this morning under its daily reporting system for large purchases. That deal also had the wires buzzing when it was done yesterday.
Short supplies of milling quality wheat have buyers increasingly turning to the U.S. as the only store in town. Buyers are focusing on hard wheat, with just 4% of this week’s deals involving soft red winter wheat.
Corn sales were also above expectations, coming in at 40.5 million bushels. Unknown destinations and Japan were the biggest buyers, with other demand seen from Asia and the Americas. Shipments remain rather slow, continuing to run behind the rate forecast by USDA for the rest of the marketing year. The U.S. is running into competition from feed wheat, which is in plentiful supply due to a series of weather problems around the world. Most notably, China was reported to be buying feed wheat from Australia this week, after shunning U.S. corn due to high prices.
China remains the dominant buyer of U.S. soybeans, with officials in Chicago yesterday inking ceremonial deals for 110 million bushels, likely new crop. China took around two-thirds of this week’s total, which came in at a robust 33.6 million bushels, despite reports a couple loads were cancelled earlier. Both sales and shipments are running at record levels, well ahead of the pace needed to reach USDA’s marketing year forecast, with a variety of other buyers noted this week as well.
Sales of soybean meal also were strong at 232,000 metric tons.
For the complete export report, click here.
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Weekly Export Sales (million bushels)
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AS OF WEEK ENDING
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1/13/11
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Actual
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Last Week
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Trade Est.
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USDA F'cast
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Export Ship-ments
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USDA F'cast
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% of USDA Commit.
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Ave.
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% of USDA Ship-ments
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Ave.
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Wheat
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42.2
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6.4
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18.4
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15.6
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25.7
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32.4
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77%
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75%
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53%
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59%
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Corn
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40.5
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20.0
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27.6
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16.6
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23.1
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25.7
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56%
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56%
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32%
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37%
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Soybeans
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33.6
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24.8
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20.3
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7.6
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49.4
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22.6
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85%
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71%
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54%
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49%
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Source: USDA, Reuters
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Tagged: usda, wheat, soybeans, winter wheat, soybean
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