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Strong corn, soybean exports close out old crop marketing year

An ag economist says farmers should be relatively happy with how corn and soybean exports ended the previous marketing year.

Ben Brown with University of Missouri Extension says the demand for corn was record large, and soybeans rebounded from a rough start.

“We had quite a bit of Chinese buying that came in,” he says. “They did buy the 12 million metric tons they promised to buy over the winter months. A lot of those soybeans got shipped and as we look ahead into the new crop marketing year we’re seeing some sales to different countries, including China.”

He says weakness in the U.S. dollar has helped some as the new crop marketing year begins.

“It’s made our product relatively cheap on the world market. We’ve seen great demand for our products around the globe and certaintly, it’s been aided by other countries having production shortfalls as well.”

Brown says the new crop corn exports have been slightly disappointing.

“You look at where prices are for corn on the international market and you can understand why some countries are holding off on corn purchases at the moment,” says Brown. “If we had any type of weather scare or drastric reduction in production for South America, it would probably help us out on the back half of the marketing year.”

The new crop marketing year for corn and soybeans started September 1.