Corn prices in anticipation of the forecast of sowing areas

Despite a slight increase on Friday, may corn futures in Chicago just a week they fell by 1.44%. Weekly export sales for the week declined by 41.3% to 1.47 million tons and shipments of maize fell by 10.4% to 1.375 million tonnes, which meets the expectations of the traders. This season, the United States exported 21.5 million tons of corn by 22.19 per cent behind the corresponding period last season.

in anticipation of the release of the USDA report on crop areas, which will be released on March 29, analytical agencies provide their own assessment of the acreage for corn and soybeans. Due to the increase in production costs and lower prices for corn compared to soybeans, traders expect a reduction of acreage to 88-90 million acres vs USDA projected 90 million acres.

a survey of 1400 farmers, Farm Futures, analysts reduced the estimate of acreage under corn by 0.2 percent to 90 million acres.

the price Ratio of November soybean futures and December corn futures is an important indicator to measure the space. A factor of 2.5 and above indicates the dominance of soybeans over corn. At the end of trading environment it was 2.59, which corresponds to the last year level, when the farmers during the sowing campaign-2017 increased acreage under soybean to 90.1 million acres vs 83.4 million acres in 2016, while the area under maize decreased from 94 to 90,2 million acres.

According to AgRural, the pace of harvesting corn in Brazil accelerated to 43% vs. 52% on average for 5 years. Corn second crop is sown 99% of the planned areas.