The USDA released its October World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimate Report that predicted lower corn and soybean production in the U.S. Todd Hultman, grain market analyst with DTN, talks about the corn numbers.
“We still have 94.9 million planted acres being estimated, but the yield was reduced from 173.8 down to 173 bushels an acre, so this corn crop is being dialed a little lower. The new crop estimate is 15.064 billion bushels. That’s just shy of the record crop set back in 2016. And of course, it’s largely because of the large planted area that we had this year, not so much because we had such great yields.”
The corn ending stocks estimate dropped from 2.2 billion bushels to 2.11 billion. The season-average farm price is now $4.95 a bushel.
He also talks about the lower soybean numbers.
“USDA came in today with a lower yield estimate. Instead of 50.1, it’s now 49.6 bushels an acre, so they brought that yield down a half-bushel an acre from last month’s report. Again, there was no change in the acreage numbers that were estimated. The new crop total is 4.104 billion bushels. That’s the smallest soybean crop we’ve seen in four years.”
The soybean ending stocks number stayed the same from the previous month at 220 million bushels, and Hultman called that a surprise as the trade expected 236 million. The season-average price for soybeans is $12.90 a bushel.
Hultman talked about the latest wheat numbers.
“We see some of the changes made from the Small Grains Summary report that we talked about on September 29. So, we see a slightly lower planted area estimate of 200,000 acres less. They’re saying 49.6 million acres were planted. The harvested acre area dropped 600,000 acres, but the yield per acre increased from 45.8 up to 48.6 bushels an acre. Again, that was the finding of the Small Grain Summary. The new crop estimate of 1.81 2 billion bushels obviously led to a higher ending stocks estimate in this report.”