Friday, January 18, 2013

Weekly Outlook - USDA Reports Provide Some Price Direction

On January 11, the USDA released a series of reports that provide important fundamental information for the crop markets. The information included the final estimate of the size of the 2012 U.S. corn and soybean crops, estimates of December 1 crop inventories, a winter wheat seedings estimate, and updated U.S. and world supply and consumption forecasts for the current marketing year.

For corn, the 2012 U.S. crop is estimated at 10.78 billion bushels, 55 million larger than the November forecast. The estimate of planted acreage of corn for all purposes was increased by 209,000 acres, the estimate of acreage harvested for grain was reduced by 346,000 acres, and the yield estimate was increased by 1.1 bushels per acre. The production estimate was larger than the pre-report average trade guess of just over 10.6 billion bushels, but the estimate of December 1, 2012 stocks of corn was actually much smaller than the average guess.  <Read More>