Between lower planting in the U.S. and competition from South America, the USDA is predicting soybean exports to be down about 12 percent this year.
However, Chief Economist Seth Meyer says growers could see higher domestic use.
“One of the offsetting factors in the US market has been we’ve had a pretty resilient and robust domestic crush. Oil has been drawn off for supportive policies in the biofuel market, and so here we are actually looking about tightening US soybean stocks.”
USDA is predicting stocks to be down by 8.5 percent at the end of the year, which is not enough of a downturn to send prices up, but at least to break their fall.
