Thursday, December 3, 2009

Big Soybean Bear Lurking

From DTN's Market Matters blog:

With Brazil's soybean crop safely sowed, bearish talk of a big South American crop is rampant.

A recent commodity report from Rabobank highlighted the changes it is forecasting in world soybean supply and demand. The bank's ag economists wrote that "weather is seemingly the only thing standing in the way of a bearish move for soybean prices in 1H 2010."

Brazil soybean area will be up as much as 4.7 percent and production could be 63 million tons this year, Rabobank estimated, and with a rebound in Argentina's production, South American output could be more than 10 MMT vs less than 90 MMT in 08/09, meaning South America could have over 24 MMT more soybeans to export next year.

South American soybean stocks are expected to rebound sharply from 08 lows, but will be below the record stocks levels of 06-07....MORE