CORN HIGHLIGHTS:

• The corn market saw selling pressure to end the week as option expiration; favorable forecasts pressured the market, despite the announced corn export sales this morning. December corn finished the week 8 ¾ cent lower.
• August corn options expired on Friday, and the market seemed pinned to the areas on larges open interest, which was the 400 September price and $420 in December.
• Weather forecasts heading into early August remain largely non-threatening for corn crop development. The latest 8–14 day outlook calls for below-normal temperatures and normal to slightly above-normal precipitation across much of the Corn Belt.
• USDA announced two export flash sales of corn on Thursday morning. USDA announced a sale of 4.1 mb of corn to Mexico and 5.5 mb of corn to South Korea for the 2025-26 marketing year.

SOYBEAN HIGHLIGHTS:

• Soybeans ended the day lower going into the weekend with the November contract closing below all major moving averages with the 200-day now acting as resistance. While there have been trade deals in the works and flash sales this week, trade is still focused more on weather which has been beneficial to the crop so far. Both soybean meal and oil were lower as well.
• The USDA announced an export sale for soybeans on Friday morning. Mexico stepped into the soybean export market and purchased 5.24 mb of soybeans for the 2025-26 marketing year.
• Though early in the soybean export campaign, 2025-26 soybean export sales have fallen behind the early pace set last year in the 2024-25 marketing year. With competition from heavy global supplies and the absence of China from the new crop soybean export market, demand concerns will limit price rallies.
• For the week, August soybeans lost 29 cents closing at $9.98-3/4 while November soybeans lost 14-3/4 cents at $10.21. August soybean meal lost $6.20 to $267.80, but soybean oil managed to close higher by 0.67 cents to 56.49 cents. The trend with lower meal and higher soybean oil has gone on since August of 2024.

WHEAT HIGHLIGHTS:

• The grain complex was under pressure yet again and wheat was no exception. US wheat closed lower in tandem with Paris milling wheat futures, and a higher US Dollar offered no support. The weakness in HRS contracts is somewhat surprising, given the USDA’s estimate of 43% of spring wheat areas now in drought, up 7% from last week, and smaller North Dakota yield estimates to boot. It is likely that technical momentum is keeping wheat under pressure for the time being.
• The final North Dakota spring wheat yield, as evaluated by the Wheat Quality Council’s crop tour, was pegged at 49 bpa. This compares with last year’s 54.5 bpa and comes after sampling 292 fields. This also falls well short of the current USDA estimate of 59 bpa.
• The Buenos Aires Grain Exchange has reported Argentine wheat sowing is 95.9% complete. This is a 3.1% advancement from the week before. As it wraps up, an estimated 6.7 million hectares will be planted in total, up from 6.3 million last year.
• The European Commission has updated their estimate of total EU 25/26 grain production, dropping it from 282.9 mmt in June to 278.4 mmt this month. This is largely due to expectations for a smaller corn crop. However, the soft wheat estimate did also decline from 128.2 to 127.3 mmt.
• In a report from the USDA-FAS, the US ag attaché to Canada noted that their 25/26 wheat production could face risks due to drought. Wheat conditions in key growing regions are said to be subpar. Additionally, the FAS is forecasting total Canadian wheat production at 35.15 mmt, which would be just above last year’s production of 35.0 mmt; Statistics Canada will be out with their first production estimates of the year on August 28.

DAIRY HIGHLIGHTS:

• Class III milk futures were mixed to close out the week. September futures saw the largest gain for 2025 contracts at just 6 cents to close at $17.55.
• Spot cheese fell 2 cents to close out the week at $1.6325/lb. Spot whey improved 1.50 cents to $0.54/lb.
• Class IV milk futures were mostly unchanged with just August through October contracts seeing slight improvements.
• Spot butter was able to catch some bidding action, gaining back nearly half of what has been lost this week to close at $2.4650/lb. Powder was unchanged at $1.2875/lb.
• Today’s Cold Storage report pegged cheese stocks at 1.412 billion pounds while butter stocks came in at 354.471 million pounds.

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Author

John Heinberg