Will China Corn Purchases Continue?

Tim Hammerich

News Reporter

Substantial purchases from China this last week have many wondering: will this continue? Standard Grain’s Joe Vaclavic weighed in with his thoughts on the likelihood of more Chinese corn purchases.

Vaclavik… “China, again, sold a hundred percent of the corn available at its state auction. Imports from the U S are certainly competitive versus domestic prices, so it does make sense economically for China to import corn from the U S. Now prices here in corn, you look at the board and you look at cash prices. We're under pressure. We're not too far removed from multi-year lows. In China, prices are the highest since 2015. They've seen a drawdown in stocks. So a drastically different situation going on there in regard to corn. Most traders, I think, and the general consensus here is that these Chinese corn purchases probably don't continue and that they probably won't have a material effect on the U.S. balance sheets, but this purchase pays the last couple of weeks has been fairly impressive. If it were to continue, there's no rule that says that it could not have a material effect on the balance sheet. So certainly something to be monitored.”

September Corn closed up $0.02 ½ to $3.33.

Not a lot of significant movement to report in the wheat or cattle markets from Friday.

Class III milk for August fell $0.20 on Friday to $22.49.