Weekly Market Update 4-18-24

Apr 18, 2024


Here is your weekly market update from the Garden City Co-op Grain Origination Team.

Trivia

  1. Which country has the most Olympic medals for swimming?

  2. In 2009, what became the first Morse code character to be added since WWII?

Answers at the bottom.

Market News

Wheat Conditions Lack of rain across major HRW growing areas is starting to show in the weekly crop conditions report. Good-to-excellent dropped 1% to 55% good-to-excellent nationwide, with poor-to-very poor increasing 1% from last week to 13%. This compares with a 27% good-to-excellent rating this time a year ago. Kansas was down 6% and Oklahoma was down 8%. Texas, Nebraska and South Dakota were all higher, while Colorado was left unchanged. Winter wheat conditions will continue to take hits if rains don't start soon.

Planting Corn planting is underway across parts of the country, with USDA reporting the crop at 6% planted, up from 3% last week and slightly higher than the 5-year average. Kansas came in at 13% planted, a 9% jump from last week. Double digit planting progress has been made in Texas, North Carolina, Missouri, Tennessee, and Kansas. 

Exports Export sales were overall disappointing in this morning's report. Corn was reported with a mediocre 19.7 million bushels of old crop, on the low side of trade estimates. New crop sales were reported at 2.6 million bushels - and while this is a welcome sight, new crop sales are towards the lower end of the five year range for this point in the marketing year. Beans were reported with 17.8 million bushels of old crop and 9.7 million bushels of new crop sold. China continues to turn to South America for their soybean demand. Wheat export sales showed a net cancellation of 3.4 million old crop bushels, primarily by China, and sales of 8.2 million new crop bushels. Demand for US crops remains slow and disheartening.

Chinese Tariffs President Joe Biden called for major increases to tariffs on Chinese steel and aluminum products in a speech made yesterday. He argues that low-cost imports from China is undermining American-made products and threatens U.S. manufacturing. Biden indicated that he would ask the U.S. trade representative to increase tariffs on certain Chinese products to 25%, up from current tariffs of 7.5%. With Chinese demand for U.S. ag products already low, this rhetoric does little in the way of giving hope for any strengthening in our economic relationship.

Weather

Hot and windy all week turned into chilly and windy today - and it looks like these cooler temperatures are here to stay through the weekend. Highs bounce back and forth between the 80s and 60s next week, with several more windy days in store. Saturday has a chance for some much needed rain across our draw area.

Trivia Answers

  1. The United States (575)

  2. The "@" symbol