USDA Report Marketing Year High Corn Sales

The USDA's weekly export sales report said that 1,850,800 MT of old crop corn was sold by US shippers last week - a marketing-year high - with further nominal net sales of 30,400 MT for delivery in 2010/11.

Teasingly China showed up as only taking the 115,000 MT of old crop corn that we already knew about, although our old mate 'unknown destinations' also bought 240,100 MT. If that was China it still falls short of the ten cargoes talk that had been getting bandied about, although today's report only covers sales for the period April 23-29. So anything sold since last Thursday won't show up until next week.

The trade had been expecting sales of 950,000 – 1,200,000 MT, so today's numbers are pretty impressive, especially as they fall on top of the previous week's total of 1,430,700 MT. That's more than three million tonnes sold in the last fortnight, not bad going I'm sure you'll agree.

For the record soybean sales came in at 283,200 MT for delivery in 2009/10 and 209,100 MT for delivery in 2010/11. That was well below estimates were for combined sales of 700,000 – 1,100,000 MT. China took 180,000 MT of old crop and 168,000 MT of new crop.

Wheat sales were also a bit disappointing at 150,200 MT for delivery in 2009/10 and 134,100 MT for delivery in 2010/11. Estimates were for combined sales of 250,000 – 400,000 MT.