Fundamentally Speaking

Joel Karlin
DTN Contributing Analyst

With all the focus on supply, there has been scant attention paid to the demand side of the equation though consumption remains strong both overseas and domestically.

New crop corn, soybean, and soybean meal sales have been very strong over the past month as many foreign buyers are seeing value in both corn and soybeans at what are four year lows.

The fact that our exports remain so robust months after South America harvested record crops of each speaks volumes about how solid overseas demand has been.

The accompanying chart shows new crop U.S. soybean meal sales on the books as of the third week of July going back a number of years in short tons.

These sales are also plotted as a percent of the July WASDE new crop soybean meal export projection.

Through July 21, 2014-15 soybean meal exports are 2.957 million metric tons or 3.259 million short tons.

This is by far the largest amount of new crop sales on as of the third week in July and are 27.7% of the 11.750 million short ton export projection for this coming year as given by the USDA in the July 2014 WASDE report released earlier this month.

This also is the highest percentage sold for this time ever and is in part an effort on the part of importers to assure themselves vessel slots this fall.

(KA)