Kevin McNew, Chief Economist for the Farmers Business Network (FBN), is joining Mac Marshall, Vice President of Market Intelligence for the U.S. Soybean Export Council (USSEC) and United Soybean Board (USB), and Jim Sutter, CEO of USSEC, Sunday, April 11. The group will be dissecting the United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) April World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates (WASDE) report.

WASDE serves as an indicator of where supply and demand, and ultimately the price of soybeans may go. USSEC hosts a webcast each month to provide an exclusive update to stakeholders. Marshall says this month’s WASDE comes at an interesting time between two important reports, last week’s planting intentions and stocks report and the May WASDE’s first look at new crop balance sheets.

“That’s not to say there aren’t interesting things to look for in this particular report,” Marshall says. “The first thing is looking at the ending stocks figures for both the U.S. and the world. The U.S. was maintained last month. We’ll see if there’s any movement on that. What is that carryout going to be on August 31? We’re at the tightest stocks in seven years, so do we potentially see that getting any tighter between now and the end of the current marketing year?”

Given the timing of this report in worldwide crop production cycles, Marshall also has his eye on international updates, specifically in South America.

“There was an upward revision to Brazil last month as the USDA took it up by a million metric tons,” he says. “We’re looking at a record crop size of 134 metric tons. That crop is now about 80 percent harvested, so there might not be an adjustment in volume there, but there may be in Argentina where harvest has not yet kicked off, at least as of the tail end of last week. This is at a point in time when it is usually eight to ten percent complete.”

Continuous downward revisions have been reported due to Argentina’s drought throughout the planting and growing season. Any adjustment there will affect global carryout, as well.

In addition to updates around the soy complex, Marshall is looking at the animal balance sheets this month.

Marshall says April’s webinar guest brings an exciting perspective to the webcast.

“It’s always exciting when you have an emerging business model being in a forum for direct engagement, and Farmer’s Business Network has certainly been making a lot of news over the last five years,” he explains. “The first thing I saw when I opened up the planting report last week was 87.6 million acres and I said, ‘Boy, that looks like a familiar number.’ That was the FBN number for soybeans from their survey that had been released a couple weeks prior. Really excited to talk to Chief Economist Kevin McNew both about what they’ve done in terms of their survey and their views on markets going forward.”

This month, regular attendees of USSEC’s WASDE webinar may notice a schedule change. Though typically hosted the evening of the report’s release, April’s webcast will be hosted the Sunday after.

“This is to balance the needs of our domestic and international stakeholders,” Marshall says. “It allows our domestic audience to go into the week with some additional perspectives on markets and it allows for our international audience, particularly in Asia, to hit the trading week running, getting to hear a couple perspectives on the WASDE and lingering impacts of last week’s report.” You don’t want to miss this exclusive update April 11, 7:00 – 7:45 p.m. CT. Register today.

To see last month’s WASDE webcast key takeaways, take a look at March 2021 WASDE: Record Export Projections for Soy Maintained.