U.S. farmers planted far more corn than expected — so much more that corn production could jump by a startling 14 percent from last year for the biggest harvest ever, according to USDA data. A bin-busting crop could weigh on market prices for months.
As the same time, strong soybean prices were buttressed by the rush into corn. There was less territory left for soybeans, so the fall harvest is likely to be smaller than projected at the start of the planting season.
“It is hard to envision a scenario where corn prices can increase much from current levels unless we observe poor weather over a wide swath of the U.S. Midwest between now and the fall,” wrote analyst Joe Jansen at the farmdoc daily blog on Wednesday. “For soybeans, the situation is reversed.”
In its Acreage report, the USDA estimated corn plantings at 94.1 million acres, the largest in a decade and 6 percent larger than in 2022, and soybeans at 83.5 million acres, down 5 percent from last year, based on a survey of nearly 64,000 operators during the first two weeks of June. In March, producers indicated they would plant 92 million acres of corn and 87.5 million acres of soybeans.
Based on USDA’s projections of yields and harvested area, the corn crop would total 15.65 billion bushels, and the soybean harvest could be 4.3 billion bushels with normal weather. Ahead of the Acreage report on Friday, a record-setting soybean crop and the second-largest corn crop seemed possible if plantings matched the March estimates. The largest U.S. corn crop was 15.148 billion bushels in 2016, and the largest soybean crop was 4.465 billion bushels in 2021.
“The market will pay considerable scrutiny to yield estimates released on July 12 in the next WASDE report,” said Janzen, a University of Illinois agricultural economist. Weather in July is often the determining factor in corn yields.
Also on Friday, the USDA released its quarterly Grain Stocks report, showing corn, soybean, and wheat stockpiles were smaller than a year ago and lower than traders expected.