The August 2021 Position Report was released Friday, September 10th. This gives us the final loss and exempt percentage of 1.64% for 2020 crop and adjusts the final carryout to 608,137,394 pounds.
Our first look at 2021 crop receipts show that the industry received 311,548,734 pounds which is 14.49% above the 272,130,185 pounds received last August. This is due to the crops timing and not a reflection of crop size. Early feedback is that the crop is roughly 10% off based on Nonpareil and Independence deliveries/turnouts.
Total shipments for the month were 207.35 million pounds, this is an increase of 7.4% when compared to last year's 193.05 million pounds. This is the new shipment record for August. Export shipments were 140.80 million pounds, which is up 10.8% from last year. Domestic shipments were 66.56 million pounds, this is an increase of 1.0% over last August's 65.93 million pounds. The logistics issues and backlog at the ports do not seem like they are going away anytime soon, we will see over the coming months how this impacts the demand overseas and California inventories.
New sales for the month were 138 million pounds compared to 288 million pounds sold last August. Overall, the crop is 27.6% sold versus 35.7% sold at this time last year. This does not come as a shock since most growers and handlers have been in a holding pattern for the last month while they try to determine where their crop yields will end up.
As for the impact of the report on pricing - so far, it appears to be fairly neutral. Inshell demand cooled off a few weeks ago and prices have come down as a result. Meat prices have been stable, with some slight increases for the larger product due to how small the average kernel size is this season. We should start to see sales pick up over the next few weeks as processors continue to size product and have a better idea of what is available.
