Today’s NOPA soybean crush, that’s the National Oilseed Processes Association, and those members account for about 95% of the US soybean crush.

That crush came in at a very large 165 million bushel, and when we look at this chart the yellow bars have been below the green bars 3 of the past 4 months.

 Indicating that this year’s crush has been running a little below last year’s record crush. The only exception back in December

But last year’s crush was reduced significantly by extremely tight supplies and extremely high prices. The February crush came in way above the year ago crush and we expect that could very well continue in the months to come.

Although our year-to-date crush is virtually right on the year ago level, crush going forward over the next 6 months will be well above the year ago.

USDA’s estimate that final crush will be up 3.5% looks to be a good estimate and we wouldn’t be surprised to see US crush exceed USDA’s estimate due to the lack of supply availability out of Argentina going forward.