WASHINGTON, Jan. 10, 2014 – Unsold U.S. corn supplies before the 2014 harvest will total 1.631 billion bushels, the USDA said today in a report. That’s down 9 percent from the December estimate while almost double a year earlier, after farmers harvested the biggest crop ever.

The 2013 crop, the world’s biggest, was pegged at 13.925 billion bushels (354 million metric tons), down 64 million bushels from the December estimate on lower yields. Still, production was up 29 percent from the drought-plagued harvest of a year earlier.  Cash corn prices will average $4.40 in the market year that began Sept. 1, the USDA said, unchanged from the December estimate while plunging 36 percent from the previous year.

The world corn production estimate was raised to 966.92 million metric tons, 12 percent higher than a year earlier, mostly because of an increase in China’s projected crop to 217 million tons from 205.6 million. The global soybean production estimate was raised 6.2 percent from a year earlier; the global wheat crop increased 8.6 percent.

In a separate report, USDA said about 10.426 billion bushels of unsold corn were on hand as of Dec. 1, up 30 percent from a year earlier.

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