The USDA released its August WASDE (World Agricultural Supply & Demand Estimates) report Wednesday.
Dan Basse is president of AgResource Company in Chicago.
"They didn't hold a lot of surprises," he said. "Maybe the big surprise was the U.S. soybean yield at 53.3 bushels an acre, that's a record. We also had a record corn yield at 181.4 bushels an acre. Combined the supply side of the equation looks rather adequate. End stocks grew a little more than 100 million bushels in corn up to a 33-year high of 2.65 billion bushels. Soybean end stocks at 610 million bushels, wheat declined to 925."
Basse commented on the world stage.
"In the world category, there wasn't much change. We look at world corn stocks at 317 (million metric tons), that's up two (million tons). Soybeans were 95 (million tons), up 300,000 ton. Record large world wheat stocks at 317 (million tons), maybe they're slightly bearish. As you stand back from the report, the U.S. has got a big crop in the making. They didn't change the Canadian wheat crop which was a little bit of a surprise, we thought it may move higher, but overall an abundance of supply in the United States and around the world. Chicago is trying to bounce just a little bit from this number, again we don't think the rally will carry through as harvest lies ahead and we still have a fair amount of old crop corn to move from the farm in the United States."
Basse notes the crop in the U.S. is looking good at this point, but could use some rain heading into September.
"They look really good. We just finished a crop tour across much of the Midwest, where we really liked what we see. This is a very special soybean crop, if we get a couple rains. We think a yield could maybe even go from 53 up to 54/55 (bushels an acre). We did have some problems on Monday with straight-line winds in Iowa. That may have damaged nearly 1.4 to 1.5 million acres of Iowa corn, so there could be a reduction of a bushel or a bushel and a half on the national yield based on that."
He notes that outside of the straight-line wind damage, the crops look relatively good but will need one or two more rains before we finish up in early September.
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