Corn Harvest Behind Expectations

In the overnight session, the grains are mostly unchanged with corn down 1 cent, soybeans up 3/4 of a cent and wheat trading down 4 cents. The U.S. dollar increased a fraction of a percent in the overnight and crude oil jumped 73 cents after selling off during yesterday’s session. The weather looks mostly clear with some showers later on this week. The most recent models show that planting delays seem unlikely in the short run.

The crop progress report was released at 3 PM CST on Monday and showed that corn harvest had not moved along as much as analysts expected. Only 18 percent of corn was harvested which was below the expectations of 21 percent and the four year moving average of 23 percent harvested during this time of the year. The harvest pace for soybeans advanced from 7 percent last week to 21 percent which beat expectations and is well over the four year moving average of only 16 percent harvested.

Crop conditions remained mostly unchanged with corn rated good-to-excellent holding steady at 68 percent. Soybean conditions rated good-to-excellent slipped 1 percent this week to 62 percent.

Yesterday, export inspections were strong for wheat which beat analyst expectations. Wheat recorded 651,194 metric tons inspected for export which was above the 350,000-550,000 metric tons expected by analysts. Corn met expectations by recording 809,383 metric tons and soybeans missed expectations to the low side by recording only 530,493 metric tons.

Dry weather is expected to continue in Ukraine which is running around 40 percent below the average precipitation over the last 90 days. Soil moisture levels are low and there is concern that the dryness is hurting wheat germination in that region. Ukraine’s dryness coupled with the dry forecast in Australia over the next couple weeks has wheat traders wary.

—Cody Bills