Today’s USDA Report Big News for the World

This week – USDA is expected to decrease its estimate of this year’s corn crop by another 15-percent to around 11-billion bushels. Another expectation of the report is USDA will confirm reports that this year’s drought is the worst since 1988 – devastating the world’s biggest corn crop and extending a period of extremely low inventories into a third year. Going even further – USDA may cut soybean production by eight-percent – which would mean domestic inventories would be the lowest in 32 years. There is some hope for soybean crops to be revived by rain – but corn fields have no chance at recovering. In the past two months – Chicago Board of Trade corn futures have increased more than 50-percent and soybeans nearly 30-percent since the middle of June – yet prices are 9-percent below a record reached in July. Veteran Grains Analyst Rich Feltes says there could be negative implications for China and their inflation rate if USDA’s corn and soybean estimates are much below trade expectations.