USDA acknowledges European crisis in March WASDE report

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The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is out with its monthly World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates (WASDE) report.

Pre-report, many were questioning to what extent the war in Ukraine, which has driven markets higher over the last two weeks, would be accounted for.

The USDA has made some adjustments — albeit minor — to the global wheat balance sheet, due to the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine.

USDA lowered Ukraine’s projected exports by 4 million metric tons to 20 million. Russian wheat exports were reduced 3 million metric tons to 32 million. Despite lower Black Sea exports, world wheat ending stocks were pegged at 281.5 million tons, up from 278.2 million in February.

Looking at domestic wheat supply and demand, the USDA reported unchanged domestic use, reduced exports, and higher ending stocks. The reasoning for higher supply boiled down to imports being reduced by 5 million bushels (all for Hard Red Spring Wheat), while exports are reduced by 10 million bushels.

U.S. corn ending stocks were dropped from 1.54 billion to 1.44 billion bushels, with global ending stocks sitting around 300.97 MMT, down from 1.2 MMT from the previous report in February.


Scott Irwin, Agriculture Economist at the University of Illinois, provided an interesting conversion of Russia crop production into million bushels for the 2021/2022 crop year.

Soybean ending stocks were lowered, as expected — down 40 million bushels to a total of 285 million bushels. Exports were raised 40 million bushels to 2.09 billion based on lower production and reduced exports from South America.

 

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