The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) released its monthly World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates (WASDE) on Friday, March 8th. There were a few minor adjustments this month to both USDA’s views on its U.S. and global balance sheets. In the U.S., USDA raised MY 2018/19 soybean crush by 10 million bushels or about 273,000 tonnes. With no other changes in its U.S. soybean supply and demand estimates, this lowered projected ending stocks by the same amount to 900 million bushels or about 24.49 million tonnes.
Looking at USDA’s projections for U.S. soy products, increased crush raised projected soybean oil output by 52,000 tonnes while a lower implied soybean meal yield projection kept output unchanged this month. USDA raised its projection of soybean meal imports by 90,000 tonnes to approximately 408,000 tonnes but kept projected soybean oil imports unchanged at 136,000 tonnes. On the demand side of its soy product balances, USDA raised projected biodiesel usage of soybean oil by 90,000 tonnes while domestic soybean meal consumption was raised 91,000 tonnes. The net impact of changes this month saw projected U.S. soybean oil ending stocks reduced 38,000 tonnes to about 912,000 tonnes. Projected MY 2018/19 U.S. soybean meal ending stocks were unchanged from February at 408,000 tonnes.
This month’s report also saw some minor adjustments to USDA’s global soybean balance sheets. Projected global soybean output was reduced by 900,000 tonnes to 360.1 million tonnes due primarily to lower output seen in Brazil and Paraguay (down 500,000 tonnes each). Despite the slight reductions, USDA is projecting record global soybean output in the 2018/19 marketing year as Argentina’s soybean crop is set to rebound following drought conditions that resulted in a short crop last spring. Aside from the adjustments to output, there were few noteworthy changes to USDA’s supply or usage projections in this month’s report.
