Corn Down Beans Up Last Week

It was a week farmers will remember for a long time with corn and bean prices going the opposite directions thanks to the USDA Acres Report. The USDA shocked corn traders with the Acres Report showing farmers planted over 91 million acres of corn this year. However, it was really at the time of the USDA survey farmers "intended" to plant over 91 million acres of corn. The USDA said it will resurvey 14 states because about 17 percent of the corn was not planted yet when the Acres Report survey was done.

Bean traders however, had a shock in the other side when the USDA said farmers planted about 80 million acres this year. That was about 4 million acres below what the market expected. The USDA is planning on a resurvey in 14 states because at the time of the survey 41 percent of the beans were not planted yet. It got lost in all the acres news but Friday morning the USDA announced a daily soybean sale of 544,000 MT of beans to China for the current marketing year.

The end result of the USDA Acres Report is that it meant nothing. It was very outdated the instant it was released. However, it was a pretty real number to those that were long corn going into the report. They have huge margin calls to cover today!