WASHINGTON, Nov. 10, 2015 -- This year’s soybean crop will be the biggest ever – and bigger than projected a month ago – and the corn crop is also projected larger than in October, according to the latest USDA forecasts.
The soybean harvest, which as of Sunday was 95 percent complete, will total 3.981 billion bushels, up 93 million bushels from October’s estimate, USDA said yesterday in a monthly report, theWorld Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates. The increase is mainly due to higher yields in Iowa, Illinois and Minnesota.Corn production will reach 13.654 billion bushels, after USDA added 99 million bushels from the month-ago projection, shy of last year’s record crop of 14.2 billion bushels. Yields are averaging 169.3 bushels an acre, just 1.7 bushels below last year when they were the highest ever. About 93 percent of the crop was in the bin, USDA said Monday in a separate report.
Don Roose, with U.S. Commodities, said many in the trading community saw the big numbers in this report coming, so the price impact in the grain markets might be muted.
“We went into this report oversold. We were looking for a negative report, and we got a negative report,” Roose told Agri-Pulse. “I think we’re going to find out how much of the bearish news is already dialed in (to the markets).”
Several market contracts traded lower immediately after the release of the report but eventually stabilized later in the day. December corn futures touched a new low of $3.56 a bushel before closing at $3.59. Soybeans for January delivery dropped 11 cents to close around $8.55 a bushel.
Roose also pointed out that the report confirmed suspicions of high ending stocks in China for several commodities, including corn and coarse grains, adding almost one billion bushels.
“That’s a big number,” he said. “It just tells you that they’re probably not going to be importers any time soon.”
In the report, USDA projected a season-average corn price 15 cents lower at $3.35 to $3.95 per bushel, and the soybean range dropped 25 cents on both ends to $8.15 to $9.65 per bushel.
Other key figures from the report:
--Exports took a hit across several commodities. Wheat export projections were dropped 50 million bushels from October, sorghum exports are expected 105 million bushels lower, and corn exports are seen down 50 million.
--The meat production forecasts were left largely unchanged. Beef and pork production estimates were slightly lowered, but broiler production is forecast higher for both 2015 and 2016.
