No Bull | March Madness

March 30

What.

A.

Month.

March was one for the record books.

Be it weather, a financial industry meltdown that spilled over into ags, Argentina’s crop failure, Brazil’s logistical nightmares or more Russia-related headline drama than ever before - March was chock-full of madness.

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The madness is only beginning

Earlier this week EIA released energy stats from the month of December:

For the first time in history, renewable diesel production surpassed that of traditional biodiesel in a meaningful way.

This represents a turning point in history as we enter a new era in biomass-based diesel production - monumental changes for both renewable energies and the feedstocks (like soybean oil) that are required in their production.

This will continue to be a focal point in the coming weeks and months as I work to learn more about the impact of renewable policies on agriculture.

Next on the docket - sustainable aviation fuel (SAF). This is the next sleeping giant that impacts not only soybean oil, but our favorite yellow stuff too.

That’s right - row crops are about to take us to the skies as the airline industry makes a push into biofuels.

More next week.

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Corn Craziness

Since March 14, we have had twelve old crop corn export flashes totaling more than 3.4mmt (134mbu).

Add in the March 6 sales flashes to Japan and Unknown and we have had our biggest month of such announcements since April 2022.

China’s obvious buying of the dip rallied old crop corn futures 40 cents and firmed the May/July inverse by a dime after months of ho-hum export demand.

Export sales for the week ending March 23 were 40.8 million bushels bringing cumulative sales just above 1.4 billion bushels - still lagging the pace needed to hit USDA’s current 1.85 billion bushel full-year estimate by nearly 100 million bushels.

The bright side is we are now on a trajectory that implies USDA will need to raise their full-year estimate in upcoming reports - which is much better than the six times they have reduced their estimate in the past eight months.