China Buys U.S. Ag Products

Here is a little good news for farmers, China is buying a lot of agricultural products from the U.S. under the terms of the trade deal. Given the fallout from COVID-19 traders are not paying any attention though. I was reading my daily report from Pro Farmer and they printed the customs data from the first 3 months of 2020. The total value of ag products for the first quarter of 2020 was $5.05 billion dollars which was a 110 percent increase from 2019!

Looking at the different ag products China bought, it included 7.81 million metric ton of soybeans valued at $3.1 billion. That was a 210 percent increase from last year. China bought 168,000 metric tons of pork valued at $430 million. That was an increase over last year of 640 percent. In addition China bought 124,000 metric ton of cotton valued at $230 million which was a 43.5 percent increase. Plus this month China bought a lot of corn and wheat.

Right now none of those purchases by China makes any difference. All traders can focus on is the turmoil in the energy and ethanol sector and disruptions in the food processing chain with processing plants shutting down.