For the fourth straight week, US soybean exports have hit a marketing-year low as China has continued its recent pullback of purchases.
According to commodities broker Greg McBride with Allendale, the weekly US Export Sales Report on Thursday morning showed another disappointing week for soybeans, while corn exports continued a positive trend.
?Weekly exports were neutral,? McBride said. ?In the middle of the range for corn at 1.37 million metric tons. It was disappointing again for soybeans at 407,000 metric tons. That was at the low end of the range of estimations. The thing that we?re watching right now is how much China has started to back off of those purchases. We?ve been talking about that for a few weeks that they have slowed down. Now we are at four straight weeks of a marketing-year low for soybean export sales.?
McBride says over the next two-to-six weeks, the US will be keeping a close eye on potential cancelation notices from China.
?The Phase One Deal overall has been a success,? McBride said. ?We don?t know the full breadth of what they have purchased when it comes to agricultural products, but we do know they have bought a heck of a lot more corn than expected and quite a bit of beans. I think they are actually at or near their expectation for bean sales. What we would be concerned about is as we start to see the South American production cycle kick in, is that those sales switch from the US down to Brazil.?
The next US Export Sales Report will be released on Thursday, December 10th.
