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Given the defensive tone that CBOT has been in before the release of today’s US/World crop and supply/demand updates didn’t provide any additional large negative reaction to prices after their release. Domestically, the USDA revised their major crop ending stocks as the trade was anticipating, but only soybeans were much higher the trade’s average. In S America, the USDA continued their conservative approach with only 1 mmt decline in Argentine’s corn crop while they left Argentina beans and both of Brazil’s 2024 crop estimates unchanged. 

Given this morning’s dramatic correction in Argentina’s Rosario Exchange corn output from 57 mmt to 50.5 mmt, today’s USDA 1 mmt decline wasn’t unusual given their conservative approach to S Am crop estimates. A Spiroplasma disease was behind Argentina’s sharp corn crop decline that surfaced last week. In their international data the USDA also sliced 1.5 mmt from S Africa’s corn crop to 14.0 mmt which was reflected in their world 23/24 stock decline 1.4 mmt to 318.3 mmt, but remains up from last year’s 302 mmt world stocks. The US ending stocks also declined by 50 milion bu to 2.122 billion as the trade was generally expecting. The World Board increased by exports and ethanol demand by 25 mil bu each and left US corn exports unchanged. Some analysts thought the USDA might slice overseas demand after the past two week’s slippage in US export sales. 

Similar to corn, the World Board left their S American bean crop at 155 and 50 mmt for Brazil and Argentina. The trade and S Am analyst remain concerned about Brazilian output in the 150-152 mmt range, but the USDA hasn’t reacted to these country report s from Brazil. Overall the World USDA stocks were left unchanged at 114.2 mmt which is up from last year’s 101.3 mmt level. The World Board did up the US ending stocks from 315 to 340 million bu today. They dropped their exports by 20 mil to 1.7 billion, but their 2 million lower seed and 9 million lower residual demand forecast were unexpected. They did slice US bean imports by 5 mill bu, but without any cuts in S Am’s bean crops this month’s US ending stocks were larger than expected. However, the trade’s post-report reaction suggest that the market remains cautious about S Am crop output.  

There weren’t big changes in 2023/24 world wheat crop ideas this month with just 500,000 increase in the EU crop. The trade is looking forward to USDA’s 2024/25 wheat crops ideas for India, the EU (too wet) and Black Sea which will be update next month. The trade was defensive about US wheat exports being completed by June 1, but the USDA took 30 million bu out this food grains feed demand to 90 million bu. They also sliced 5 million from US imports which raised the US wheat stocks to 698 million bu, 5 million over the trade’s average idea. Dryness in the western half of the Southern Plains remains a factor in the US 2024 crop potential. However, the upcoming Black Sea & India’s wheat crop outputs will be big factors in US and World price action going forward.

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