Grain Comments: 11.20.25

Good morning. After a down day on Wednesday across the ag space, markets are staging a quiet recovery so far in the overnight session to start Thursday, with the wheat market the leader to the upside and the corn and beans just moderately higher at this writing. With there not a lot of new news in the markets overnight, traders will be watching to see if there are any additional soybean sales to China that show up on the daily wire this morning. The weekly sales today shouldn’t produce much of any market reaction in either direction as they are old news and are still for weeks before any of the China business would’ve started, which would lead us to expect another choppier day of trade today and probably also tomorrow going into the weekend. Without any additional headlines on the situation, we feel Monday’s highs could likely be short term tops for a bit, with some back-and-fill action likely probable into next week’s holiday. Corn futures to start Thursday morning are trading unchanged to a penny higher, soybean futures are 1-2 cents higher, and the Chicago wheat market is 3-4 cents higher. Products are quietly lower, soybean meal is trading either side of unchanged and soybean oil is down 10-15 points. Outside markets higher, crude oil futures are up 50-60 cents/bbl, the Dow Jones index is up 300 points and the US$ index is up 10 points; the S&P500 is up 90 points and the NASDAQ is up 450 points.

Today’s Reports: Weekly Export Sales; September Non-Farm Payrolls; September Unemployment

• This morning’s weekly export sales report, with data for the week ending October 2nd, is expected to show corn sales during that week totaled 1.4-2.5 MMTs, soybean sales totaled 600k-1.6 mil MTs, and wheat sales totaled 350k-600k MTs. The report will be out at its regular 7:30am central time.

• The CFTC released its first commitment of traders report since the government shutdown began yesterday afternoon, with data for the week ending September 30th. Though the data is old news at this point, the report showed managed money traders during that week were sellers of 40,635 contracts of corn (net-short 135,310), sellers of 9,411 contracts of soybeans (net-short 38,712), and sellers of 1,274 contracts of Chicago wheat (net-short 99,209). In soy products, funds were sellers of 14,335 contracts of meal (net-short 117,604) and sellers of 559 contracts of oil (net-short 1,457).

• Ag Secretary Brooke Rollins said on a news program Wednesday afternoon that the Trump administration would soon be announcing details of the farmer payment plan that had been previously announced before the government shutdown. The USDA did not immediately respond to requests for comments, but Bloomberg also reported that details of the payments were likely to be announced in early December.

• Census export data for the month of August, delayed due to the shutdown, was released on Wednesday; the data showed US corn exports in the month at 6.397 MMTs (252 mil bu), soybean exports at 2.273 MMTs (84 mil bu), and wheat exports at 2.692 MMTs (99 mil bu). For corn and beans, these figures bring cumulative census exports for the marketing year to 72.454 MMTs for corn (2.852 bil bu) and 51.370 MMTs for soybeans (1.888 bil bu); rough estimates from USDA export inspection data for the marketing year have corn sales at 2.636 bil bu, while soybean sales are seen at 1.829 bil bu.

• Destination data for China’s October imports showed the country had still imported zero soybeans from the US in the month, despite overall imports surging to a new record. The bulk of the 9.48 MMTs of imports for the month expectedly came from Brazil, with data showing arrivals up nearly 29% from the same month last year at 7.12 MMTs. Shipments from Argentina were also up more than 15% at 1.57 MMTs. From January-October, China has now imported 70.81 MMTs of soybeans from Brazil (+4.5% from last year) and has imported 4.46 MMTs from Argentina (+24%).

• Following yesterday’s biofuel-related announcements from the Trump administration, shares of crop traders and producers of the fuel expectedly nose-dived, with ADM shares down nearly 7%, Bunge down more than 5%, and Darling Ingredients down nearly 8%. Some analysts have argued that the EPA could potentially increase the RVO to offset some of the small refinery exemptions that now seem unlikely to be reallocated, but we have little insight into how likely this might be. In any case, a two year delay in any sort of policy ruling would undoubtedly be a negative to producers of domestic biofuels and the feedstocks used to produce them.

• Russia’s Ag Minister, Oksana Lut, said on Wednesday that farmers should not expect wheat export prices to return to the $300-400/ton level seen the past several years, adding that the current $230/ton was a “good, balanced, weighed, price.” Lut cited continually increasing production estimates for this year’s harvest as the basis for her comments, and also mentioned that stock levels were adequate due to most of the world’s global exporters seeing good production years.

• Precip will expand through the south-central part of the US through the day today and generally through the rest of the week, with the EU model this morning showing anywhere from a half inch to 2-3″, with the heaviest totals expected through TX/OK/AR/MO. The northern part of the Midwest will stay on the drier side though, with just light precip potential expected for northern MN/WI/MI. Temperatures will continue to be mostly warmer than normal, with cooler air still expected to work south by the Thanksgiving holiday towards the end of next week.