Farmers will reap their largest soybean crop ever this year, and the third-largest corn crop, said the Agriculture Department on Monday in its first forecast of the fall harvest. The mammoth crops will outpace demand and drive down prices, it said. Corn and soybean inventories would balloon to the largest size in six years and weigh on commodity markets far into 2025.
Commodity prices boomed with the return of China to the U.S. market in fall 2020 and the Russian invasion of Ukraine in early 2022 before beginning a decline that, combined with high production costs, was expected to squeeze farmers’ finances this year.
Based on its survey of 14,200 producers, the USDA said record-high yields — 183.1 bushels of corn and 53.2 bushels of soybeans per acre — would drive the production of 15.147 billion bushels of corn and 4.589 billion bushels of soybeans. The corn crop would be 1 percent smaller than the record set last year and a hair behind 2016’s harvest. The soybean crop would be 2.8 percent larger than the record set in 2021, the agency projected.
The USDA’s soybean forecast was larger than analysts expected and prices at the Chicago futures market tumbled to the lowest level in almost four years. Soybeans for delivery in November closed at $9.86 a bushel, a drop of 16-1/2 cents for the day. The corn forecast was on par with traders’ expectations and December corn rose by 6-1/2 cents per bushel, to $4.01-1/2.
This year’s corn crop will sell for an average prices of $4.20 a bushel, 10 cents less than thought a month ago, and soybeans would fetch an average $10.80 a bushel, 30 cents lower than projected in July, said the USDA. If the forecast proves true, season-average corn and soybean prices would be the lowest in five years.
At the same time, corn and soybean ending stocks, the amount of grain in storage when the 2025 harvest begins, would swell to their largest volume in six years. Corn stocks would climb by 11 percent, to 2.073 billion bushels, and soybean stocks would mushroom by 62 percent, to 560 million bushels, the third-largest ever. The record end stocks total for soybeans was 909 million bushels in 2019.
As usual, Iowa would be No. 1 in corn with a 2.58 billion-bushel crop and Illinois would be first in soybeans, with 709.5 million bushels. Iowa is perennially second in soybeans and Illinois the runner-up for corn.
The USDA forecast the cotton crop at 15.1 million bales weighing 480 pounds each, up 25 percent from 2023 with better weather in Texas, the top-producing state. The U.S. wheat crop was pegged at 1.98 billion bushels, 9 percent larger than 2023 due to larger plantings and higher yields per acre. Corn, soybeans, wheat, and cotton are the four most widely grown crops in the country.
The USDA Crop Production report was available here.
The World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates report was available here.