USDA speeds up weekly corn sales update

again, and with two releases per week going forward, the market is beginning to gain a clearer sense of how much of the new US crop has actually been sold. The USDA’s December report is not expected to bring major surprises for the corn market. Some adjustments to production will likely be made in the final crop report next January. There are few demand-side factors that could radically change the US outlook at this point. Domestic demand is already projected to grow strongly, and the ethanol mandate has not undergone any structural increase so far. Therefore, the focus now turns to the data that is beginning to be updated — namely, export sales. Last week, the USDA began updating weekly export sales figures twice a week, on Mondays and Thursdays. This schedule will continue until the backlog caused by the federal government shutdown is cleared. By the end of December, all data will likely have been brought up to date. In last week’s update, US export sales reached 33.5 million ...