Soybeans appear poised to be the runaway winner among the Big Three US agricultural commodities in 2020, with big gains on Tuesday putting the market up by more than one-third on the year.
As can be seen on the March futures chart below, soybeans began the year trading well below $10/bu at around $9.63. The market trended lower still through much of the winter, eventually bottoming out around $8.25 in late April amid the first wave of pandemic-related lockdowns. Futures chopped mostly sideways through May but then started to move mainly higher in June and July before really starting to really take off in August in the wake of dryness concerns in large portions of the western Corn Belt.
Continued Corn Belt dryness, heavy demand from China and a tightening 2020-21 supply-demand situation then the sent the market sharply higher into the fall and early winter as a lack of rain for the 2020-21 soybean crops in Brazil and Argentina added to the upside.
Reaching a high of $12.99/bu today, the March soybean future has gained $3.36 or almost 35% from the beginning of the year.
As for corn, the March future started 2020 at around $4.12/bu, moving steadily lower into May. After a brief weather-related spurt higher in early July, the market moved lower again and bottomed in early August at around $3.30. After that, prices have moved sharply higher, mainly buoyed by an underwhelming US corn crop and an eroding 2020-21 ending stocks estimate.
With today’s close of $4.66 ¼, the market has jumped 54 cents from the beginning of the year, an advance of around 13%.
The March futures chart for the benchmark Chicago wheat market looks markedly different than for corn and soybeans, with prices showing a more jagged up-and-down pattern. However, at today’s closing price of $6.18 ½, the market is still up more than 35 cents from the beginning of the year – a modest gain of just over 6%.
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