Last Week's USDA Reports Held Some Surprises

With the commodity trading being closed for the Fourth of July holiday yesterday, there are no prices to report today. So we will examine the numbers from last week’s USDA planting and stock reports which did have some surprises.

One of the surprises was in the Planted Acreage Report which stated that this year’s corn acreage was 97.7 millions acres which was 2/10ths of a percent more than last year and the highest amount of corn acres in 77 years. Upon hearing that news a week ago, the corn futures moved down 4 percent.

However, there was an equalizing number in the USDA’s count of corn stocks as of June 1 as Lance Honig of the National Agricultural Statistics Service explains

Honig: “That number was actually a bit lower number than a lot of people had anticipated. June 1 corn stocks totaling 2.76 billion bushels, it’s 12 percent below the same level a year earlier. In fact that is the lowest June corn stocks since 1997.”

Honig shares that winter wheat statistics as well. He says wheat producers planted 1.7 percent more wheat than forecasted in May. There is a gap between what was planted however and what may be harvested as Honig says that the estimates are only 75 percent of those 43.7 million winter wheat acres may end up being harvested.

Honig: “That is the lowest harvested-to-planted ratio for winter wheat we’ve seen since 2002.”

All of the dry weather in Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas and Colorado really doing a number on their winter wheat.