USDA has slashed its corn forecast and dropped soybean and wheat production numbers - while boosting prices for all three.
World Ag Outlook Board Chair Gerry Bange says in the history of changes by USDA’s National Ag Statistics Service - the latest change in the corn forecast is a doozy…
“We’re looking at a production, which is down nearly 500 million bushels from the previous forecast, we’re looking at 12.664 billion bushels, that’s down about 3.4% from last year. So, there’s been quite a change from their production forecast.”
While NASS cut corn yields for 2010-11 by a whopping 6.7-bushels per acre to 155.8-bushels…
“We had 164.7 last year, and that’s what everyone remembers, and I believe that NASS actually started a record number this year, things were looking very, very good. But, then as the year progressed we saw more and more evidences, and more and more antidotal information from various reports and elevators that these numbers were not coming in what had been anticipated.”
Lower production combined with smaller ending stocks boosted the average corn price 60-cents to a record five-dollars even. Bange says USDA experts blame the summer heat…
“The heat this year was apparently far more damaging than it would have been…than one would have expected. You know we saw some very, very very high temperatures and evidently the thinking is that during the fill period in particular that retarded the amount of fill.”
Meantime - Bange says the soybean price was raised 85-cents to 10.75 on lower - but still record - production…
“Soybean production now is pegged at 3.4 million bushels, that is a record. Even with the slightly lower yield forecast we came out, or the National Ag Statistics Service came out with 44.4 bushels per acres, that’s down .3 bushels per acre, but 44.4 is still a record.”
As is the 1.5-billion bushel soybean export forecast. All of this pointing to higher livestock input costs.
2010-11 wheat prices were pegged at 5.50 a bushel - up 20-cents from last month’s forecast on 41-million bushels less production.
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