The Agriculture Department on Thursday cut its yield estimates for corn and soybeans, resulting in lower production forecasts for both crops.
In its latest World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates report, USDA dropped its average corn yield projection to 173 bushels per acre – down from 173.8 last month – and dropped the soybean yield to 49.6 bushels per acre – down from 50.1 in September.
This month’s WASDE was mostly uneventful, with yields the primary focus for market watchers, said Nathan Losey, an analyst with the AgResource Company.
“There was a concern that yields could be increased based on what we heard from harvest reports, but that didn’t happen,” he said. “They went the other direction and reduced everything.”
Along with the yield reduction, USDA lowered its corn production forecast to 15.064 billion bushels and cut its estimate for soybean production to 4.104 billion bushels.
Other notable changes in the supply and demand report included a decrease in the forecast for U.S. soybean exports and an increase in USDA’s projection for crush.
The U.S. is now forecast to export 1.755 billion bushels of soybeans, down from USDA's September prediction of 1.79 billion bushels.
USDA said it lowered its forecast for U.S. soybean exports due to “increased competition from South America,” raising its prediction for Brazilian soybean exports by about 18.4 million bushels.
It’s easy to be “in the know” about what’s happening in Washington, D.C. Sign up for a FREE month of Agri-Pulse news! Simply click here.
But the crush prediction for the 2023-24 marketing year was raised slightly to 2.3 billion bushels, up from 2.29 billion.
The 10-million-bushel increase is being "driven by higher soybean meal exports and soybean oil domestic demand,” USDA said in the WASDE report.
But that crush number could change further, said Losey.
“We still think they’re underestimating the crush based on the number of new plants that have started to come online and the expansion projects that are under way and expected to come online in the next year,” Losey said.
For more news, go to www.Agri-Pulse.com.
