FORT COLLINS, Colo. – US soybean exporters have recently made record old-crop sales and new-crop bookings are well above normal, putting an awkward spin on China’s latest claim of sharply reducing soybean demand.
Overseas demand for the US oilseed has lagged last year’s high as expected, but severe crop losses in South America and rising global prices have recently awakened buyers for both the current crop and next year’s crop.
As of Feb. 10, US soybean export sales for the 2021-22 marketing year ending Aug. 31 totaled 48.1 million tons, some 86 percent of the Department of Agriculture’s full-year forecast. Coverage was 77 percent four weeks earlier.
That is below 97 percent on the same date last year but only slightly behind the pre-trade war average, and sales are still coming in. USDA announced on Thursday that 120,000 tons of old-crop US soybeans were sold to unknown buyers.
This flurry of old-crop bookings, some 6.3 million tons between Jan. 1 and Feb. 10, is likely a record for the period and up 28 percent from last year’s more than decade high. That includes more than 2 million tons in net sales to China and about 2.8 million in gross sales to unknown buyers.
At 86 percent, the soybean sales-versus-expectations pace suggests USDA’s forecast remains reasonable. The only recent seasons in which final exports came in lower than USDA’s February peg were 2018-19 and 2019-20, when about two-thirds of the forecast had been sold by Feb. 10.
Forward soybean demand concerns are evident in the 2022-23 sales progress, which reached 4.5 million tons as of Feb. 10. That is only about one cargo behind last year’s pace, which was a 10-year high.
China accounted for 2.58 million tons of new-crop US soybean sales as of Feb. 10, and unknown buyers, many of which likely represent China, had secured 1.55 million. Most of these purchases have occurred since Jan. 1.
China’s recent US soybean purchases, especially for the upcoming marketing year, are contradictory to Wednesday’s report from Xinhua news agency that China can cut soybean demand by 30 million tons.
