Highlights
USDA announced yesterday morning the sale of 396,000 mts of soybeans to unknown.
Taiwan shot down a Chinese drone for the first time Wednesday. It was a “civilian” drone in Taiwan’s airspace. Escalation of tension between Taiwan and China is negative for beans and, to a lesser extent, corn, because the US militarily supports Taiwan. Anything that creates friction between those two countries increases the chances of soybean trade between the US and China. Note that China cannot go more than six months without US soybeans without risking 1.4 billion people getting hungry and the government will not let that happen.
July soybean crush was expected to be 180.5 million bushels. USDA released at midday yesterday the July soybean crush was 181 million bushels vs. 166.3 million a year ago and 174.1 million bushels in June. Analysts complain about poor soybean demand. We booked about a million mt for export the past ten days and the July crush was larger than expected and 8.8% larger than the same month a year ago. The US soybean crush capacity will increase by 30.4% by 2026 just with what is under construction now. More on that this weekend, but demand is not the problem.