E238: Planting, Tariffs, and the April WASDE

The April WASDE dropped Thursday, April 10, bringing with it a raft of bearish and bullish updates for the three major grains. This month’s report came in the wake not only of market-cratering tariff announcements, but also in the week after the department’s latest Grain Stocks Report and the annual Prospective Planting update, meaning the USDA had plenty to chew on when shaping the latest numbers.

To guide us through this trove of information, we’re joined once again by DTN Lead Analyst Rhett Montgomery, who takes us beat by beat through all three reports, and puts USDA’s outlook on the South American crop that’s wrapping up and conditions in the US in perspective. 

He’ll talk us through expectations, and how updated demand figures are finally aligning with data from other sources, and hopefully providing farmers some price incentives, even as impacts in the wider economy promise to shift trade and export figures in future reports. We’ll also discuss the breakdown between corn, soybean and wheat acres farmers are planning to plant this year, and how recent announcements, and weather forecasts, might still be able to shift those numbers around.

Plus, Rhett digs into stocks, the strength of the U.S. dollar, and the state of the global wheat trade.