The October 2021 Position Report was released Thursday, November 11th. The shipping and logistics issues have continued to plague the industry leaving us with a fairly disappointing report this month.
Year to date crop receipts now total 1,794,183,213 pounds, which is 0.97% below the 1,810,654,910 pounds received to date last October. We still need a few more reports to get a rough idea of the final crop size, but at this point many have moved their estimates to land between 2.8 and 2.9 billion pounds.
Total shipments for the month were 217.07 million pounds, this is a decrease of 29.9% when compared to last year’s 209.68 million pounds. Export shipments were 151.88 million pounds, which is down 35.6% from last year. Domestic shipments were 65.19 million pounds, this is a decrease of 11.6% versus last October’s 73.76 million pounds. The lower industry sold percentage and logistics issues have continued to negatively impact the shipping numbers.
New sales for the month were 244 million pounds compared to 250 million pounds sold last October. Overall, the crop is 41.8% sold versus 50.0% sold at this time last year. Sales rebounded this month landing very close to last season’s numbers.
Prices continued to slip over the last month as the industry tries to catch up on sales and avoid overloading warehouses. This report brought another steep drop in pricing, current sales offers are roughly $0.25 per pound lower than this time last week. We hope the decreases have come to an end and bottomed out now that we are pre-objective levels. As things stabilize, we should see buying demand increase.