In the past year, the record-large U.S. soybean stockpile shrank by 42 percent, thanks to strong demand for the oilseed and the smallest crop since 2013, said the USDA on Wednesday. Nonetheless, the Sept. 1 inventory of 523 million bushels is the fourth largest since soybeans became a major U.S. crop in the 1940s.
The stockpile is expected to diminish further in the year ahead, according to USDA estimates of soybean production and consumption in 2020/21, although it could still be one of the largest ever. Five harvests have resulted in soybean stocks that exceeded 400 million bushels the following Sept. 1. This year’s soybean crop is forecast at 4.3 billion bushels, the third largest on record.
According to the quarterly Grain Stocks report, based on a survey of farmers and warehouse operators, the corn stockpile had fallen to 1.995 billion bushels on Sept. 1. It was first time in four years that less than 2 billion bushels of corn were in storage when the new crop was ready for harvest.
The USDA’s estimates were smaller than expected by traders, and futures prices soared for corn, soybeans, and wheat after the report was released. Prices of soybeans for delivery in December leaped by more than 30 cents a bushel, December corn by more than 14 cents, and December wheat by more than 28 cents.
Even with a record-setting corn harvest and a bin-busting soybean crop on the horizon, the smaller-than-expected Sept. 1 stockpiles mean “less grain predicted in the country after this harvest than earlier in the year,” said Britt O’Connell of the Commodity Risk Management Group.
A year ago, soybean stocks were the largest ever, at 909 million bushels. The weather-damaged 2019 soybean crop was 3.55 billion bushels, 19 percent, or 828 million bushels, smaller than the three-year average. Consumption during the 2019/20 marketing year was nearly the same as the preceding year, at 3.9 billion bushels, according to the USDA’s latest WASDE report. The result was a huge drawdown of stocks.