-Argentine crop ideas moving lower
-No USDA sales announcements for 1st time since Sept 8
-Ukraine wheat areas may finally see some rain
-Soybean/corn export sales huge
-US harvest to continue largely unabated
ï‚· There were no USDA sales announcements this morning for the first time since September 8.
 Reduced planted area expectations and concerns over continued dryness during the growing season due to La Nina are pushing Argentine new crop production ideas lower. The Buenos Aires Grains Exchange said they expect the coming soybean crop to decline to 46.5 MMT from this year’s 49.6 MMT vs USDA’s expectations for an increase to 53.5 MMT, while the corn crop is now seen declining to 47 MMT from this year’s 50 MMT vs USDA’s current ideas for another 50 MMT crop. The exchange sees the wheat crop declining to 17.5 MMT from last year’s 18.8 MMT given reduced planted area and dry conditions. The USDA is currently estimating the new wheat crop at 19.5 MMT vs their estimate of last year’s crop at 19.7 MMT. There is debate over the potential impact of this year’s La Nina, with a local Argentine meteorologist associated with the Exchange saying the situation is “problematic†but overall sees the implications being mild as it is not an especially strong La Nina at this time.
 A widespread rain event appears possible across Ukraine’s winter wheat areas over the weekend, which is severely needed. The extremely dry conditions in recent month have left only 10-15% of arable land suitable for planting according to the country’s meteorological agency.
 Please see our Market Insights post at https://portal.rjobrien.com/MarketInsights/Blog/Read/41545 details on today’s USDA
Export Sales report.
ï‚· While it wasn’t unexpected, this week’s soybean sales were absolutely huge at 3.195 MMT (117.4 million bushels), even beating already strong market expectations of 2.0-3.0 MMT and followed the previous two weeks’ sales of 90.6 million and 116.2 million bushels, respectively. This week’s activity included official net sales to China of nearly 1.7 MMT and at least 1.0 MMT in sales to unknown. Through this week’s reporting period of 9/17/20, China officially had 19.2 MMT of U.S. soybeans on the books, with another 500k+ tonnes in daily sales announcements since.
ï‚· U.S. corn sales were very strong, as well, at 2.139 MMT (84.2 mil bu), beating market expectations of 1.05-1.80 MMT and rising from the previous two weeks’ strong sales of 63.4 and 71.8 million bushels. Sales this week included 566k tonnes to China, bringing their official sales on the books to 9.8 MMT.
ï‚· U.S. wheat sales last week were uneventful at 351k tonnes (12.9 mil bu), falling within expectations of 250-600k tonnes and
similar to the previous two weeks’ 12.3 and 12.2 million bushels.
ï‚· New crop soybean product sales last week were respectable with SBM’s 295k tonnes in line with expectations of 200-400k, as well as SBO’s 20.4k vs 0-30k expected.
Weather
Dry weather is expected to dominate the majority of the corn belt through Saturday. A few showers look to work across eastern MN, far NE IA and most of WI in the next 24 hours, bringing totals of .25†or less. By Sunday, a front is still seen to bring totals of .25-.75†to eastern MN, far northeast IA and into WI, MI, OH and the far northern sections of IL and IN. A decent rain event is set for Monday into Tuesday bringing rains of around .35-.85â€+ mainly to the NE Midwest. The GFS is keeping with the idea of the rains to fall mainly to the north of a line from the NE corner of SD to Chicago to around Columbus OH. The European model has a new development and indicates an area of low pressure to develop along the front and cause rains of .50-1â€+ in most of MI, IN and OH. Temps in the next 4-5 days will run above average in most of the belt. Below average temps then look to take over for the 6-10 day period. Temps of 32-36 are now possible north of I-80 by the morning of Oct. 1.