By Carrie Muehling
BLOOMINGTON – Monday's USDA numbers were maybe a bit friendly to corn prices but not to the soybean complex.
USDA announced final corn production for the 2014 crop at 14.216 bushels, down 200 million from the Nov. estimate. The agency did not change the harvested acres on corn, but cut the yield average to 171 bushels per acre.
“We did see as harvest moved north yields did deteriorate somewhat from what we were hearing in parts of Illinois and parts of the southern United States. Probably not a big surprise there,” said Aaron Curtis, commodity risk consultant with Mid-Co Commodities.
USDA raised soybean yields to 47.8 bushels per acre for a total production 11 million bushels higher than before. That’s on a harvested acres number 300,000 acres lower than the previous estimate.
Ending stocks for 2014/15 include a corn number down 120 million bushels to 1.877 billion. Soybean ending stocks stayed the same at 410 million bushels. Some thought that number would be lowered by about 10 million bushels.
Grain stocks for corn were higher than anticipated at 11.2 billion bushels. Soybean stocks came in lower than expected at 2.524 billion bushels. That’s up slightly from Nov. numbers.
Curtis said the market seemed to be more focused on production and current bean stocks than grain stocks this time around.
“Seems like most of the activity is within the first, very few seconds to minutes. There is some quick market reaction and that’s been kind of the change here now that we’ve started releasing these reports during the trade. There’s some pretty frantic trading here right away and then as we get farther and farther away from the time the report was released, things calm down,” said Curtis.
World numbers added to soybean weakness following the report, as bean prices were down sharply just after the release. World ending stocks were up over 90 million metric tons and the USDA raised Brazil’s crop estimate up to 95.5 million metric tons from the previous estimate of 94 mmt.
Curtis said the market will likely turn its focus back to South American weather now that the report numbers are out. The trade will also watch demand and outside factors like the strength of the dollar, which affects exports.
Carrie Muehling can be reached at [email protected].
