By Karen Braun
FORT COLLINS, Col. (Reuters) – U.S. soybean exporters recently posted record sales of old crops and orders for new crops are well above normal, embarrassingly contradicting China’s latest forecast of sharply reducing demand.
Overseas demand for the US oilseed was below last year’s high, as expected, but severe crop losses in South America and rising global prices have recently sparked buyers for both the current and next season’s crops.
As of Feb 10, U.S. soybean export sales for the 2021-22 business year ending Aug 31 totaled 48.1 million tonnes, about 86% of the Department of Agriculture’s annual forecast. The coverage was 77% four weeks earlier.
That’s down from 97% on the same date last year, but just slightly behind the pre-trade war average, and sales are still coming in. The USDA announced on Thursday that 120,000 tonnes of U.S. old-crop soybeans have been sold to unknown buyers.
This flurry of orders from old crops, about 6.3 million tonnes between Jan 1 and Feb 10, is likely a record for the period and up 28% from last year’s more than a decade high. . This includes over 2 million tonnes in net sales to China and around 2.8 million tonnes in gross sales to unknown buyers.
Concerns about future demand for soybeans are evident in the 2022-23 sales progress, which reached 4.5 million tonnes on 10 February. That’s just about a charge behind last year’s pace, which was a 10-year high.
China accounted for 2.58 million tonnes of new-crop soybean sales in the US as of Feb 10, and unknown buyers, many of whom likely represent China, secured 1.55 million. Most of these purchases have taken place since January 1.
China’s recent purchases of soybeans in the US, especially for the next marketing year, contradict Wednesday’s report by Xinhua news agency that China may reduce soybean demand by 30 million tonnes.
The supposed timing for this was unclear, although such a sizeable reduction would be a 30% cut in annual imports from current levels and more than a quarter in domestic consumption. This would put Chinese demand for soybeans close to 2013/14 levels.
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