Soybean Crush Margin

These are the crush margins over the last 12 years. You can see the crush margin rallied dramatically, even though beans are strong and over $2 the last two months, oil and meal are up even strong. Back in June soybeans were priced at $8.60/barrel but crush margins on the board were only about $0.60 so actually we had soybean crush plants losing money back in June even though beans were over $2 cheaper. Today we have crush margins of about $1.45/bu. This means is that if soybean crushers can sell oil and meal they are more than willing to pay the $10.75 soybean price because they can lock in $1.45/bu crush margin, even paying for soybeans at the current prices. This is good news from the demand side as long as crush margins remain strong, U.S. soybean crushers and buyers will be more than happy to buy beans even at the current level.