The Agriculture Department raised its estimate for corn production to 15.1 billion bushels, a jump from its June projection of 14.8 billion, but slightly lowered its prediction for ending stocks, in the latest World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates report issued Friday.
The slight, 5-million-bushel decrease from 2.102 billion bushels to 2.097 billion came as a surprise to analysts, who had predicted a much larger figure. Dow Jones had said the number would be 2.272 billion bushels.
"This should have been a 2.3 billion bushel ending stock report," Rich Nelson, a strategist at the agricultural market brokerage firm Allendale, told Agri-Pulse. "USDA kept it at 2.1 so that's a positive report, and it's a bit of surprise."
USDA also lowered its estimate for corn beginning stocks by 145 million bushels, from 2.022 billion bushels to 1.877 billion, “mostly reflecting a greater use forecast for 2023/24,” the report said. “Exports are raised 75 million bushels based on current outstanding sales and shipments to date, [and] feed and residual use is up 75 million bushels based on indicated disappearance in the June Grain Stocks report.”
Corn acres planted are up from the June WASDE's 90 million acres to 91.5 million acres, as are harvested acres, which are up from 82.1 million acres to 83.4 million. The June 28 acreage report included the updated estimates.
The ending stocks estimate for soybeans was lowered from 455 million bushels to 435 million bushels. USDA now expects the 4.43 billion bushels will be produced, rather than 4.45 billion. It held its soybean export projections at 78 million bushels and import expectations at 15 million bushels.
Allen said the new crop export bookings are the lowest the U.S. has seen in 19 years.
"What's interesting is that they chose to be aggressive on corn, but for soybeans they're not recognizing all the bearish arguments and chose not to," Nelson said of USDA.
USDA forecast soybean production at 4.4 billion bushels, down 15 million on lower harvested area of 85.3 million acres, a decrease of 300,000 acres from June. Yield is unchanged at 52 bushels an acre. Soybean stocks are projected to end the 2024/25 year at 435 million bushels, down 20 million from the June projection.
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USDA also raised its ending stock estimates for U.S. wheat to 856 million bushels, a 98-million-bushel increase from last month's estimates. It raised its U.S. production estimates from 1.8 billion bushels to 2 billion bushels, while decreasing U.S. import expectations from 120 million bushels to 105 million bushels.
"They were certainly aggressive with their production numbers here," Nelson said of the wheat projections, noting it was the second month in a row of U.S. wheat production increases. The projection of about 2 billion bushels, up 133 million from June, "blew the doors off anybody's expectations," he said.
Corn yield was unchanged from the June acreage report, at 181 bushels per acre, which would be a record.
The prices of corn, soybeans and wheat were all projected lower in the report. For the 2024-25 marketing year, USDA estimates the farm-gate price of corn will average $4.30 per bushel, down 10 cents from June’s WASDE; the soybean pirce was lowered 10 cents to $11.10 a bushel. The wheat price estimate was reduced 80 cents to $5.70.
The report helped drive the price of December corn up 5 cents to nearly $4.16 a bushel, in trading as of 2 pm EDT, two hours after the WASDE was issued. November soybeans were up just over a penny to $10.69 a bushel.
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