Grains –
Census trade numbers for October were released yesterday, and considering the discrepancy between inspections and Census figures caused some confusion for some last marketing year, it might be worth reviewing these in more detail going forward.
We’ll start on soybeans as that was really where the confusion popped up last year. Oddly enough, however, so far this year the difference in inspections vs. Census is running in reverse of what we saw last year. MYTD Census exports have totaled roughly 554 mil bu, which is actually about 8 mil bu smaller than inspections would imply. Last year Census exports were “only” 455 mil bu, but this was about 6 mil bu larger than inspections had implied. Census shipments consistently ran above inspections last year. No matter how you look at it, exports for the first two months of the year are off to an exceptionally strong start as shown in the chart.
The other Census figure worth looking at this morning is meal. We don’t get a meal inspections figure of course, so we’re forced to compare this against the FAS shipment data. Census meal shipments for Oct were 933k short tons, which was sharply higher than what was implied in the FAS shipment data. Looking back over the past several years, this is the biggest monthly discrepancy I see between the two totals. With the Census figure coming in so strongly, perhaps we do need to reconsider our disagreement with the WASDE export figure on meal, which to this point has looked too high. It still looks too high relative to commitments, but if Census continues to exceed shipments like this it could come within the ballpark. At the same time, if exports are indeed going to be so strong, it might also weigh on our implied domestic demand calculations. In the end I don’t know if it’ll be a big game changer on the meal balance sheet, but rather we might just be shifting some demand totals from domestic use to exports. We’ll need to watch these numbers closely in the next few months for a better handle on things.
Otherwise there isn’t much to get excited about in the Census figures. Corn shipments were roughly 143 mil bu, which came in just under inspections but not by a significant degree. Like meal, oil Census exports were larger than implied by the shipment data, so that is something we’ll want to watch a bit more closely going forward as well. Census ethanol exports were 132 mil gal vs. 75 mil last year, supporting our belief that ethanol inventories are having a hard time building as they normally do at this time of year due to solid export demand.
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