Miller Magazine Issue: 154 October 2022

MARKET ANALYSIS 96 MILLER / OCTOBER 2022 Pakistan, and MENA with quality and logistics problems in part of traditional origins. US corn sales for the 22/23 marketing year have gotten off to a slow start, with shipped and unshipped sales just 22% of the current USDA forecast vs. the 30% average pace for the second week in the new MY. Outstanding sales are just half of what they were for the same period last year. The IGC downwardly revised its 2022/23 world corn crop outlook by 11 MMT to 1.168 billion tonnes, mainly driven by a cut in its forecast for U.S. production to 354.2 MMT from 364.7 MMT. EIA data showed ethanol production falling 62,000 barrels per day to 901,000 bdp, the smallest implied corn use for that pur- pose since February 2021. Stocks, however, dropped 342,000 barrels to 22.501 million barrels. Outlooks for clear Midwest weather added to bearish sentiment, even though the U.S. De- partment of Agriculture has projected smaller U.S. corn and soy crops compared to a year ago. The harvest is just beginning in the heart of the Corn Belt, with 7% of the U.S. corn crop and 3% of the U.S. soybean crop cut as of Sept. 18. Monday’s Crop Prog- ress report indicated 40% of the nation’s corn crop was mature, still 5% points behind the average pace. As for crop conditions, NASS showed a 52% good/ex rating, down 1% on the week. Argentina’s Rosario grains exchange cut its production fore- casts for the country’s corn and wheat crops as a prolonged drought impacts the major grains-producing country. In the ex- change’s monthly report, indeed, it estimated corn production from the 2022/2023 harvest to reach 56 MMT, below the pre- vious estimate of 58 MMT. BAGE reported that 22/23 Argentine corn planting has started. As of Sept. 21, 3% of the area had been seeded, down by 5.5 pp against the same week last year and around 8pp lower than 5Y avg. lack of soil moisture slowed corn planting, as did low temperatures. Argentinian MinAgri re- leased its estimate for the Argentinian corn planting area, pro- jecting 10.4 million ha for 22/23, down from the 10.6 estimated in the August report. According to the ministry, area sown may continue to decrease if there is no rain to allow for planting work. As of Sept 22, 7% of the area had been planted against 11% YoY. Planting is being carried out slowly due to unfavorable conditions of soil moisture and weather temperature. FranceAgriMer said French farmers had harvested 26% of this year’s grain corn crop by Sept. 19. That is compared with 14% a week earlier and with a 1% harvest progress by the same week last year. An estimated 43% of corn crops were in good or excellent condition last week, unchanged from the previous week. That is the lowest in FranceAgriMer data going back to 2011. Corn crops were running 22 days ahead of the growth pace of last year and 12 days ahead of the five-year average, FranceAgriMer said. Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog says that things are far worse than we are being told. Over the past few months, we have been carefully documenting facts that show that global food production is going to be way down in 2022. Unfortunately, most people out there don’t seem to understand that the food that isn’t being grown in 2022 won’t be on our store shelves in 2023. We are potentially facing an absolutely unprecedented worldwide food crisis next year, but the vast majority of the population doesn’t seem very alarmed about this. Sharp crop reduction looks scary when we compare it YoY or “to the 190X” but we have to keep in mind higher popula- tion – then it looks even worse. This means the world needs Ukrainian grain and grain exports have to be extended.