USDA Report This Morning Ouch!

Shortly after 11 this morning, after the USDA released the August Supply Demand numbers, corn headed lower. The average trade guess for the corn yield was 171 bushels an acre. The USDA raised it to 175 bushels an acre. That would put the production at a record 15.153 bushels an acre! For this report the USDA does a survey of yield plots and counts the population. I read that the plots had the fourth-highest population on record but the USDA used an all-time high estimate for the grain weight. With the increased production in the United States, the world ending stocks was raised to 220.81 MMT compared to 208MMT in last month's report. Even the bears may be taking the big yield estimate from the USDA with "a grain of salt" because as I write this corn is only down about 2 cents!

The USDA provided a surprise with the bean estimate too, raising the national yield to 48.9 bushels an acre. The July estimate was about 46.7 bushels an acre. Total production this year was raised to 4.06 billion bushels. On the friendly side, old crop ending stocks were lowered to 255 million with increases in exports and crush. New crop ending stocks even with the increased production were raised 40 million bushels to 330 million bushels. Like corn beans are well off the lows as I write this as they are down only 13-14 cents.