USDA Releases Acreage and Grain Stocks Report

Friday morning – USDA released their Acreage and Grain Stocks report. According to Mike Zuzolo – President of Global Commodity Analytics – it was a bit on the bearish side:

“We came in with a 96.4 million planted corn acreage number,that was at the top of the range. Beans were the say way at 76.1 million planted. The top end was 76.5 for corn. Corn came in right in the middle of the range where beans came in above trade guesses on the dow jones estimates. Six hundred sixty seven million bushels for beans as of June 1 topped the estimates. So on the surface the report was a negative report for the row crops. I would rate it more neutral for wheat, with 56 million planted acres that was on the low end of trade guesses. Wheat stocks were at 743.”

This was the first major report from USDA to be released while trading was taking place in Chicago – and Zuzolo said there was movement early on:

“Corn initially went negative right after the numbers came out. Then it turned around and went back up toward its weekly highs of over twenty cents in a matter of minutes. This is where the trade price activity is going to be very hard to track in the short term for the agriculture sector if you are a producer. I’m tending to go back to the medium term and not look every hour.”

A portion of the reports that caught Zuzolo’s attention was that of the harvested acres:
 

“USDA came in at 88.8 million harvested acres. The June report a few weeks ago was 89.1 million harvested. USDA is really starting to account for the problems in the corn crop that we are seeing.”
 

That’s Mike Zuzolo from Global Commodity Analytics.