It was a good week for corn prices even though corn was slightly lower Friday. For the week March corn gained 11 cents a bushel. Since the middle of January corn has rallied over 30 cents a bushel. Export demand for corn has really picked up the last few weeks but the real mover in corn prices is the dry weather in Argentina. The Buenos Aires Grain Exchange rated their corn crop at 5.5 percent good with 76.4 percent poor to very poor. In addition they dropped their production estimate to 37 MMT. I suspect some farmer selling of corn is slowing down the corn rally!

Bean traders are also focused on the weather in Argentina. The Buenos Aires Grain Exchange lowered their bean production estimate 3 MMT to 44 MMT. Soybean meal prices have been moving sharply higher because Argentina is the worlds largest meal exporter. There is talk that they may not have the beans to crush to meet their export commitments. Export sales have been lagging the pace needed to meet the USDA objective for the year so it was nice to see a good weekly total Thursday of 31 million bushel plus two daily sales announcements Friday. One was to unknown and the other China.

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