We're starting to see a change in the winter weather pattern. At least I think everybody is hoping so. This past week we had the temperature go above freezing for one day and it had people of southwestern Ontario hoping for more. In fact, the forecast for the next month looks warmer than usual. So, I know that many southwestern Ontario farmers will be wondering what that wheat crop looks like under all the snow that we've gotten this winter.

Thankfully, even the winter wheat market has awakened a bit. I'll get into that a little bit later.

First off, we had the latest World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates (WASDE) report from the USDA on Feb. 10.

The February report is not usually a big report as it's sandwiched between January and March. This report didn't veer from that script. For instance, the USDA bumped corn exports up by 100 million bushels (mb), to 3.3 billion bushels (bb). Keep in mind that these corn export levels are at record amounts.

Last week, USDA reported 81.5 mb of corn sales for the week ending Feb. 5. This was almost double the prior week and the highest in three weeks. Also, the commitments for corn exports for 2025 and 2026 remained 31% ahead of the same point a year ago. That's pretty impressive. The USDA also lowered corn ending stocks by 100 mb, to 2.127 bb. Total domestic demand for U.S. corn was forecast at 13.17 bb, an incredible figure compared to what I've reported here in the past.

On the soybean side of the equation, the USDA was like the secret squirrel. That's the term I use for when markets are quiet. Simply put, the USDA really didn't change much at all from the January balance sheet. Soybean ending stocks remain at 350 mb. However, they did increase the Brazilian soybean crop forecast 2 million metric tons (mmt), now sitting at 180 mmt. On the wheat side of the ledger, the USDA didn't say much at all, boosting wheat ending stocks in the U.S. by 5 mb from the January report.

The USDA report for February seemed to be a nothing burger. In many ways, it just reflected what we already knew. We had really big crops based on the numbers we saw in January. The only problem was the prices really didn't follow that script. During the last week, we've seen an increase of about $0.50 in the price of soybeans, $0.20 in the price of wheat and a not-so-significant rise in the price of corn. However, even though it seemed it didn't want to, the corn price was trying to follow. The question is why did we see such a robust increase in prices in such a moribund market structure?

I set out to find out why soybeans were increasing in price so much compared to their bearish fundamentals, because it wasn't making much sense to me. I simply look at the big crops in South America and it didn't seem to jive with the price of soybeans going up $0.50 in one week. So, pretty quickly I was thinking to myself I just simply didn't know what was going on. It's like the trading algorithms knew something, but they weren't telling me.

I brought this up on social media to get other people's opinion. However, I first laid out my opinion that I didn't know why this was happening. I was then inundated with opinions by almost everybody who knew what was going on. Most of them told me that it was raining in northern Brazil and there was a lot of poor-quality soybeans that the Chinese didn't want. There was also many people telling me that there were problems in China, and they preferred to buy U.S. soybeans because of such higher quality. I then had a friend chime in to tell me that it seems like everybody knows why the price of soybeans is going up. I responded by telling him that's what everybody here on social media feels, but the right answer is nobody knows.

However, we will take $15 for old crop soybeans in Ontario and Quebec and $14 for new crop. That's what a rising futures market will do when the Canadian dollar continues to flutter in the 73-cent US range. At the same time this was happening, I was hearing from an U.S. colleague who talked about a huge rise in basis levels for soybeans on the eastern seaboard. It makes me think that something still is going on, but I don't know what it is.

Keep in mind that the soybean prices are about the same as they were in mid-November. How did they get that high then? Well, it had a lot to do with some social media posts by U.S. President Donald Trump in the USDA market vacuum caused by the government shutdown. Surely, some of what's going on now is because of the same thing. Keep in mind the latest weekly export sales and shipments update from the USDA show total soybean sales at 51% behind the same week from the last marketing year.

It doesn't quite add up. President Trump will visit China in April, and I can just imagine the same social media environment at that time. Our trading algorithms will be all ears. At the present time, I still don't know what's going on, but market orders are certainly being placed and some of them will surely hit. Sometimes, it is what it is.

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Philip Shaw can be reached at philip@philipshaw.ca

Follow him on social platform X @Agridome

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