NW Iowa corn near record, soy shatters it

USDA is now calling for a record 3.98 billion bushel soybean harvest, a 99 million bushel increase in its corn production forecast and a 4% increase in its sorghum crop production estimate from last month.

The USDA on Tuesday forecast the US soybean harvest as the largest ever, while the corn crop was seen at the third largest on record. Producers expect to harvest 84,000 acres, unchanged from the October forecast but down 2,000 acres from 2014.

For wheat, US ending stocks were raised to an unexpectedly bigger 911 million bushels from 861 million bushels due to a cut of 50 million bushels in exports. That is because today’s low for December corn reached $3.58. The extreme daily high in July was $4.15, but the price declined below $3.50 by the end of the month.

USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) have released their monthly Crop Production report which updated feed grain and soybean production for 2015.

Soybean production for Virginia is forecast at 22.9 million bushels, down 5 percent from the October forecast and down 9 percent from 2014. Corn basis has improved as much as 30 or 40 cents above harvest levels in a few locations near hungry processors.

CBOT grains and soybeans got a few support from a weak USA dollar on Wednesday with the US dollar index, a measure of the dollar against six major currencies, once losing by 0.25 percent.

Weather conditions in Brazil, especially in the central region, are supportive of the soybean crop.

Nationally, both the corn and soybean crops grew over October’s forecast. Higher US and European Union corn ending stocks are offset by reductions for Brazil and Indonesia. End-of-year stocks are set to be 29m bushels above what was seen in 2014-15. While USA production number is increased, product reduction occurred in India, South Africa, and Uruguay.

Overall, there’s nothing in the November WASDE report to suggest that a harvest floor price has now been established. First, soybean exports exceed corn and wheat combined. In the first 9.5 weeks of the year, exports exceeded those of last year by 21 million bushels.

The amount of corn on the global market has been increased as the amount of China’s beginning stock has been bumped up 18.8m tons for 2015-16, they said.

Also, broiler exports were reduced for 2015 and 2016 from the prior month estimates – the pace of recovery from Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza restrictions and generally slow economic growth overseas has been slower than expected.

“Tuesday’s world estimates from USDA are bearish for corn, but bullish for soybeans and neutral for wheat”, Hultman said.