USDA trims U.S. wheat ending stocks

Farm and Ranch April 11, 2011 Mystifying. That’s how one analyst described Friday’s supply and demand report from the USDA. It came from Helen Pound of Penson Futures, who says the new numbers were confusing given the recent quarterly grain stocks report.

Pound: “A quarterly stocks report that indicated that we had quite a bit more corn and bean usage and less wheat usage over the last year and traders really expected to see that translated into this report. I can‘t can‘t find hide nor hair of those numbers at all in this report, in fact there are very little changes in this report. Overall if you look at carryover as a percent of usage, there was almost no change in this report.”

USDA did cut U.S. wheat ending stocks for the marketing year ending May 31st by four million bushels. That was attributed to increased seed use. Pound says the new 839 million bushel ending stocks number is still a burdensome 34 percent stocks to use ratio. There were some changes among wheat classes though white wheat stocks were unchanged at 83 million bushels, down three million from last year. The most abundant supplies are for soft red winter wheat with a 50 percent stocks to use ratio.

As for the updated world wheat carryout number Pound says;

Pound: “World carryover is much tighter than the U.S. situation at 23% carryover versus usage.”

A reason given by USDA for its unchanged corn ending stocks projection of 675 million bushels is the expectation of increased new crop wheat feeding.

I’m Bob Hoff and that’s the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report on Northwest Aginfo Net.

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