-China believed to be in for soybeans again – no daily announcements
-Brazilian June soybean exports expected to be record again
-Hogs and Pigs report expected to show record numbers again – for now
-Weather models in better agreement for two rain systems
-China corn auction hits fully again
USDA’s Grain Stocks and Acreage reports will be out next Tuesday. Wire services have not yet published average trade estimates. Our prereport commentary/analysis can be found on Market Insights at https://portal.rjobrien.com/MarketInsights/Blog/Read/40539.
Several good rain opportunities remain in the forecast over the next week to ten days keeping conditions generally favorable. Another modest increase in U.S. ethanol production is expected to be seen in this morning’s EIA weekly data. China is on holiday Thursday/Friday.
 Chinese interest in U.S. soybeans continues with several more cargoes believed booked overnight. This continues the regular buying seen of late, which does not always get picked up in the daily sales announcement as the requirement for reporting is 100k sold in a single day by a single company to a single destination. If China buys multiple single cargoes from different companies, it doesn’t have to be reported in the daily system. A complicating factor of late, though, has been presented by Chinese customs officials requesting U.S., Brazilian and Canadian soybean exporters sign declarations guaranteeing shipments are free of coronavirus. An overall pushback to the request has been seen by exporters as it is deemed an unnecessary step since the transport time is longer than the virus can survive, leaving open the risk of false positives being attributed to the cargo itself.
ï‚· There were no USDA sales announcements this morning.
 Brazilian grain exporter association Anec estimates Brazilian soybean exports in June to be 12.6 MMT, bumped lower from their previous expectation of 13.0 MMT, but would still be up sharply from last year’s 8.6 MMT and shatter the current record for the month of June of 10.4 MMT in 2018. Based on estimated June exports, marketing year-to-date (Feb-June) soybean exports of 59.3 MMT would compare to last year’s 41.7 MMT and the previous record for the period two years ago of 44.7 MMT.
ï‚· Tomorrow afternoon, USDA will release the quarterly Hogs and Pigs report. The average trade estimate of all hogs and pigs as of June 1 is 103.7% of last year (102.1-105.1 range of ideas), which reflects only a minor reduction in the year-over-year gain from the last quarter from 104.0% as of March 1. The seasonal tendency for hog numbers to increase from March 1 to June 1 is still expected to be in place, though, as the average estimate of 78.502 mil head would be up from 77.629 million as of March 1. The average estimate of kept for breeding is 98.2 (97.4-98.8 range of ideas) and compares to 100.4 the previous quarter, while kept for market is estimated at 104.2 (102.4-105.7 range) vs 104.3 last quarter. A decline in hog numbers is expected moving forward, though, with March-May farrowings estimated at 98.8, and June-Aug intentions and Sept-Nov intentions estimates at 95.3 and 95.6, respectively.
ï‚· India authorized 500k tonnes of corn imports at a reduced import tariff of 15% vs the standard 60% tariff rate in order to bolster feed supplies for the poultry industry. India has a strict non-GMO policy on imports, though, essentially eliminating the U.S. from contention. India imported 312k tonnes of corn in 2019 and has switched to a regular, minor net importer role in recent years after being a net exporter of 3-5 MMT annually from 2007/08-2013/14.
 China’s fifth weekly auction of corn reserves saw another 100% sell rate of the 4.0 MMT offered with the average price paid of roughly $264/tonne, up from the early June price paid of $252/tonne.
Weather
The next round of rains for the corn belt will arrive in the west Friday morning and then work through the region later Friday into early Saturday. The models are in fairly good agreement on things, with the general idea calling for rains of .50-1†to fall across around 85% of the region, with no strong bias to the rainfall outlay. The large differences in the models yesterday for the 6-10 day period have been worked out, at least for now. The ideas call for showers and thunderstorms to fire up to the south and west of a line from around Minneapolis to Indianapolis to Cincinnati. Amounts differ some from the models, with the GFS a bit wetter than the European, but overall, totals for Mon-Tue of next week look to be in the .75-1.5†range, with some isolated heavier totals possible, especially in central and southern IL. The 11-16 day outlook still indicates ridging to dominate most of the pattern across the central US, producing above average temps and below average precip in all of the Midwest.