-Brazilian soybean crop ideas mostly near CONAB – safrinha corn crop seen strong
-Vietnam confirms first cases of African swine fever as more confirmed in China
-Busy ag data days ahead
-Washington buzzing this week with trade talks continuing and USDA Ag Outlook conference Thur-Fri
It’s going to be a very busy several days for the grain markets to end the week. Not only are US/China trade talks continuing in Washington, but the USDA’s Annual Ag Outlook conference on Thursday-Friday will result in the issuing their first unofficial “official†look at their 2019/20 US balance sheet ideas. In years past, USDA had released initial acreage ideas in Thursday meetings, with the balance sheets released first thing Friday morning, but last year’s conference saw essentially nothing of merit put out on Thursday, and everything released Friday morning. In addition to those factors, Friday is going to see a considerable amount of “catch up†data released by USDA as the Presidents Day-delayed Export Sales report will feature a combined 6-week data dump, which will bring sales data up to February 14 as we finally see a more accurate reflection of where sales actually stand at this time. USDA will not publish each of the weekly sales numbers for the six weeks involved, but rather will include single total sales numbers for each commodity for the 6-week period. Also on Friday, USDA will release the Oilseeds Crushings report and Grain Crushings report with data for January, which also were impacted by the government shutdown. Cattle on Feed will be out Friday afternoon, as well. The EIA’s weekly ethanol data is delayed until tomorrow due to Monday’s holiday.
 A wire service survey of industry participants indicated average expectations of the Brazil soybean crop at 114.6 MMT vs the USDA’s last estimate of 117.0 MMT and CONAB’s 115.3 MMT. CONAB reflects last year’s production at 119.3 MMT, while USDA sees it at 120.8 MMT. The survey indicated overall ideas of Brazil’s coming safrinha corn crop at 65.4 MMT, in line with CONAB’s 65.2 MMT estimate and up significantly from last year’s 53.9 MMT. Safrinha corn area is seen rising to 12.02 million hectares (29.7 million acres) from last year’s 11.53 mil hectares (28.5 mil acres).
 Ukraine corn exports have totaled 15.1 MMT as of February 20, up sharply from last year’s 9.0 MMT at the same time, but if USDA’s 2018/19 export estimate of 28.5 MMT is correct, they would still be exporting a massive 13+ MMT of corn over the next four months vs last year’s roughly 9 MMT during the same period. APK-Inform recently raised their Ukraine corn export estimate this year to 26.2 MMT (25.8 MMT previously), but is still below the USDA’s ideas. Ukraine total wheat exports are now at 12.3 MMT vs 13.4 MMT last year and are expected to total 15.5-16.0 MMT, with their export program beginning to wind down for the year. Ukrainian total grain stocks as of January 1 were reported at 29.9 MMT, up solidly from last year’s 24.9 MMT, of which 7.3 MMT was wheat. Official grain stocks data, though, does not include on-farm storage of small farm operations.
ï‚· One South Korean feedmill passed on their overnight tender for 55k tonnes of corn citing offered prices being too high, while another feedmill delayed their decision on a tender for 60k tonnes, potentially seeking lower prices.
ï‚· In recent days, two more cases of African swine fever were reported in China, while Vietnam confirmed their first finding of the disease on Tuesday, as well, in three separate farm operations.
ï‚· After the close yesterday, Egypt tendered for an unspecified amount of wheat for April 5-15 shipment. There were no U.S. wheat offers made in this tender, clearly reflecting the inability of U.S. wheat to compete once again, even following their purchase of 120k tonnes of US SRW in their previous tender on February 8. The overnight weakness in wheat may very well have been influenced by the lack of U.S. participation in the tender. Interestingly, Russian wheat appears to be back in place as the lowest offer was for 60k tonnes of Romanian wheat at $249.55/tonne c&f, but Russia was a close second at $250.19/tonne c&f. Ukrainian wheat was offered at $250.90/tonne, while the lowest French offer was $254.13/tonne c&f. For refence, their February 8 purchase of U.S. SRW was priced at $260.00/tonne c&f.
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