Q&A: Marketing
"Hi Roger, I’m a reader of your posts every morning, but can’t seem to get past that most of your posts are bullish, either about weather, war, SAF, drought all over the world, but all we see is sideways or downward movement of the markets. I like to have a positive attitude also, but we missed out on some decent prices to sell our 2023 crop earlier this year because of what your recommendations and posts were saying, I know you can’t hit the highs all the time, but shouldn’t we scale in sales at profitable levels instead of all or none?"
Roger’s reply:
Rick, you are absolutely correct. Since the first of September, Brazil, the world’s largest producer of soybeans, has had its worst planting season weather since they started planting soybeans more than 60 years ago.
US soybean meal export sales are running 15% above a year ago and the USDA projected only a 4% increase. Soybean export sales have been steadily improving and are now 15% less this marketing year than a year ago, which is just 3% less than the USDA projected for the marketing year. Argentina, the world’s #3 bean exporter has been importing beans from Brazil for months! As you mentioned, veg oil and ethanol demand for SAF production is far greater than the world will ever be able to produce.
Furthermore, October 2023 was the largest US soybean crush ever and we probably will be informed today that November was the second largest US soybean crush month ever.