USDA dished out mostly positive news in its latest weekly export report, out Thursday morning. For the week ending September 5, soybeans saw the biggest upside after climbing above 40 million bushels, but corn and wheat sales also rebounded from lackluster totals a week ago.

Soybean sales reached 43.1 million bushels last week, moving moderately above the prior week’s tally of 31.5 million bushels and trade estimates of 31.2 million bushels. Export shipments were a more meager 17.5 million bushels.

“Soybean sales got off to a good start in the first week of the new crop marketing year, but much of that boost was previously reported by USDA thanks to a big sale to Mexico,” according to Farm Futures senior grain market analyst Bryce Knorr. “China continue to take delivery of purchases made this summer as a goodwill gesture but rolled over about 30 million bushels to 2019 delivery.”

Total 2018 crop shipments totaled 1.719 billion bushels according to the Foreign Agricultural Service and the final total could be higher once final data comes in from the Census Bureau, Knorr adds. This increases the potential for USDA to raise its forecast for 2018 exports in today’s World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates (WASDE) report.

Corn, in contrast, could be hard-pressed to reach USDA’s forecast for 2018 sales, Knorr says.

“The FAS total shipments of 1.937 billion bushels is well below USDA’s target of 2.1 billion, but the FAS data has been running well below the Census number, though those won’t be out until October,” he notes.

Last week, corn exports saw 19.6 million bushels in total sales – nearly doubling the prior week’s mark of 9.9 million bushels but down moderately from trade estimates of 27.6 million bushels. Corn export shipments were slightly lower, at 16.2 million bushels.

Wheat exports were also much improved week-over-week after finding 22.5 million bushels in old crop sales, minus a reduction of 300,000 bushels in new crop sales, for a total of 22.1 million bushels. That was nearly double the prior week’s tally of 11.5 million bushels and moderately ahead of trade estimates that averaged 16.5 million bushels.

Wheat export shipments were only for 15.0 million bushels, meantime, falling below the weekly rate needed to match USDA forecasts, now at 19.0 million bushels.