The September World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates report indicates tighter soybean supplies for the year ahead, leading to stronger prices. Mac Marshall, United Soybean Board vice president of market intelligence, says that stems from USDA lowering the 2024 soybean yield expectation.

“What everyone was looking for is what the soybean yield for the ’23 crop was going to look like. A lot of expectations were that we would have a cut from 50.9 bushels, trade range is looking as low as 49 and a half, settling in at 50.1. So, it shaves off about 60 million bushels of total production for the 2023 year. So, still on pace to have a large overall crop. Where that really breaks down is the inventory levels that we’re seeing for September first.” 

Marshall says the proof will come soon as harvest begins.

“Based off of this adjusted crop size figure and some adjustments that the USDA has made on the crush and export side of the balance sheet, we’ll be looking at carryout next year of potentially 220 million bushels, so a cut from an already tight position where we are now to a tighter position next year. But of course, we’ve still got the full marketing year to go through, and that all starts with the actual harvests, not just the data.” 

Marshall adds that attention now turns toward what may happen in the report next month.

“We could still see yield adjustments next month as we have additional reconciliation of yields, but also the influx of Farm Service Agency data on prevent plantings. We certainly saw updates with the integration of some of the FSA data into the corn side of the balance sheet as corn acreage was revised up. So, tight position that we’re looking at, strong pricing. Of course, there’s always the specter of high interest costs and other input costs for farmers, but we’re hitting September in the new marketing year I think in an overall strong position.” 

Keep up with the latest news from the United Soybean Board at unitedsoybean.org and Wednesday mornings at 10 a.m. Eastern on RFD-TV.