Grain Outlook Corn unlikely to see early planting

The following marketing analysis is for the week ending April 7.

CORN — The holiday-shortened week got off to a strong start when OPEC plus unexpectedly announced over the weekend they would cut crude oil production by 1.16 million barrels per day beginning in May. This seemed to counter their earlier assurances they would keep reductions at their current level in the fight against global inflation.

There was also spillover support from the March 31 U.S. Department of Agriculture reports and extreme weather patterns around the United States with blizzards, tornados, high winds and rain.

It was also reported Louis Dreyfus would be the third major grain company to stop exporting Russian grain as of July 1. According to Russia’s Union of Grain Exporters, these three companies (LDC, Cargill, Viterra) account for less than 15 percent of total Russian grain exports.

In the first crop progress report of the year, corn was 2 percent planted — which was spot-on with the average and last year. There was no planting progress reported in Illinois, Missouri, and north, but Kansas was 1 percent complete. Texas had the most in the ground with planting at 57 percent complete. Over the last 10 years, U.S. corn planting is 28 percent complete by the end of April; and over the last 5 years, 26 percent of the corn is planted by April 30. In the last 10 years, 50 percent of the corn was planted by May 10.

Safras and Mercado raised its Brazilian corn estimate to 130.3 million metric tons from 125.3 mmt previously. Conab is at 124.7 mmt and the USDA is at 125 mmt. AgRural put Brazil’s first corn crop harvest at 60 percent complete vs. 62 percent on average. Their safrinha corn crop was 99 percent planted; right on average. Argentina’s corn harvest was estimated at 10 percent complete with 7 percent of the crop rated good/excellent.

There were two daily export sales flashes this week that included nearly 6 million bushels of new crop 2023-24 corn sold to Mexico and 5 million bushels of old crop corn sold to unknown. The weekly export sales report included part of the recent heavy buying