COFCO Corporation

There was headlines from Bloomberg regarding Chinese demand.

So, COFCO, the Chinese state-run company, reportedly has inquired about U.S. soft-tread wheat for delivery to China, which is good news.

This was the first time that we've had this headline since the Trump-Z summit.

And...

We still have to roll back the tariffs, the extra 10% tariffs that are on US ag goods.

Until that happens, any buying by China would be by the state-owned firms, so Senograin or COFCO, and COFCO was the rumored one last Thursday.

We'll see.

I do think that they will buy, though, like I said.

And I think that's what we saw.

And kind of following through with what we talked about at midday very briefly, not only did we see a marketing year high in the wheat weekly export sales, but we also saw the very good news that from COFCO in China is looking per Bloomberg that they're looking for some U.S. software and wheat to be shipped for loading in the new year.

That's probably the major reason why instead of going through the midday high on this news of 610, we weren't able to go through that on the close and settled right kind of in the middle upper part of the daily trading range for soft red wheat is we're very unsure of quantity and it looks like it's going to be pushed out a little bit as far as the actual purchases.

And so that's my initial thought as to what we've been able to do on the mid-late week time period as we get very, very close and just one day away from seeing the monthly end of October.

Hey, Ted, when you think about this, as he said, China was in sort of as a favor.

It's part of the negotiations that the Trump administration has had with President Xi, the 25 million metric tons they promised to buy, usually done by the state-owned facilities, COFCO and others.

I'm wondering if you're worried that longer term, this still doesn't really bode well for the united states and its exports to china and if that is just a china turning to brazil a china uh having a smaller herd for hogs a more efficient one a smaller uh and declining population how do you view that marketplace

Yeah, Todd, I mean, there's a lot of things to unpack about exports right now.

And, um, there was many that were speculating that maybe they would buy corn.

COFCO this week came out and said, "Hmm, not sure we're gonna be buying a lot of corn.

We don't need a lot of corn." So there is another meeting in China, the APEC leaders meeting on November 18th, 19th.

Maybe we get something out of that.

Number two is China's imports are falling 7.7% September year-over-year.

Number four, China's soybean sector faces over capacity according to COFCO.

You only have to go down to headline number six to see China's corn harvest set to grow and US corn is not an option yet.

So COFCO's been putting out a lot of rhetoric that they don't need US supplies, and I think that's weighing on the market a bit too.

But, you know, uh, COFCO, a state-owned entity, China's a very savvy trader.

Maybe they're trying to-

Yes

But, um, we gotta get competitive because their economic, uh, indicators over there would say, "Hey, we'll buy from you if you're competitive, but we're not gonna spend more money just to buy from you." And I'm specifically talking about things like corn, wheat, and sorghum, the 17 billion of other products.

He worked for a commodities company called Noble Group.

He worked for a Chinese company called Costco, C-O-F-C-O.

And he worked for his father's company, which is called MarCorp Financial, which is a venture capital company.

And his father is the chairman and the co-founder.

Right.

Basically.

And then they were kind of partially taken over by this COFCO, which stands for the China Oil and Foodstuffs Corporation.

COFCO is a gigantic, gigantic Chinese agriculture company.