Grain markets finished mixed today, not a bad day of performance considering the sharp losses in the outside markets.
Grain Market News
Crude Oil
When crude oil was down 5.50 per barrel this morning it hit 65.65 per barrel breaking out of the sideways range from November.
Weekly Ethanol Production
This shows 1.014 million barrels per day produced last week.
That’s very close to the level needed for the USDA forecast.
Weekly Stocks of Fuel Ethanol
Stocks of fuel ethanol did increase significantly up to 26.383 million barrels.
That’s a new record for this week of the year and slightly above the year ago.
NOPA Soybean Crush
Soybean crush at 165.4 is up from last year and near the record for February.
Our year-to-date crush is a little bit below last year while USDA is protecting for it to be a little above at the end.
Grain Market News
Black Sea Corn Shipments
The timeframe shows about 11.5mmt of corn shipped out of Ukraine to all destinations.
It also shows China shipped 3.5mmt or 30% of the Ukrainian shipments, about 50% went to the European Union, and 20% to all other countries.
3-Day Snowfall Forecast
In areas where it is dry enough planting is beginning in the delta region and some soybeans in extreme southern Illinois.
For most farmers the planting season is just beginning in the delta and as we approach April it will begin in the southern belt, mid-April the central belt, and then the end of April in the northern belt.
Unfortunately for the northern and northwestern belt more snow is projected in area that don’t need it.
The amount of snow on the ground and the fact that the forecast continues to call for below normal temperatures and above normal precipitation needs to be monitored.
NWS Active Alerts
Storm watch primarily in the northern plains and northwestern belt where many areas have snow on the ground still.
S.A. 30-Day Precipitation vs Normal
We mentioned northwestern Brazil is about completed with planting, that state of Mato Grosso is the largest corn and soybean producing state.
Safrinha corn planting is behind in central Brazil where rainfall is significantly above normal.
Extreme southern Brazil is too dry.
May Corn Chart
Corn prices look good from the cart perspective.
From a chart perspective corn may be interested in attacking some lows from December at 6.36 and multiple lows at 6.48 from January.
May Soybean Chart
Soybean price dropped to new lows today down to 14.80 on the May chart.
The bad news is the market is still in a short term downtrend within the overall sideways range.
Good news could be we are getting close to chart support and technical indicators are close to oversold.
No sign of bottoming action from the chart or technical.
May KC Wheat Chart
Wheat prices have the trend up making new highs for the move.
The wheat market may be interested in approaching an area where ethe 20 and 40 day moving average is.
