If USDA agrees with analysts, its monthly crop report will say U.S. farmers are growing slightly more wheat and soybeans and marginally less corn than previously thought. One thing would not change in the report, due today at noon ET: a slump in commodity prices that began in 2014 is forecast to persist for years to come.
In surveys ahead of USDA’s report, traders said they expect a record-setting corn crop, the third in four years, and the third-largest soybean crop on record, on the heels of back-to-back record crops. The wheat crop would be just above 2 billion bushels, an average-sized harvest, but the wheat inventory would climb above 1 billion bushels, a half-year supply, because of huge supplies worldwide.
With the winter wheat harvest under way, analysts peg the crop at 1.45 billion bushels, up 6 percent from 2015 on high yields that outweigh an 8 percent reduction in plantings. “Combines continue to roll in south-central Kansas as the hot summer sun is just starting to warm up,” said the Kansas Wheat Commission. Kansas is the No. 1 winter wheat state. A month ago, USDA estimated Kansas would reap 352 million bushels of winter wheat, a quarter of the U.S. total and 10 percent larger than a year ago.