The government will raise its estimates of the record-setting corn and soybean crops on Friday, according to two surveys of analysts ahead of the monthly crop report and the companion WASDE report on world crops. Analysts expect USDA to peg the corn crop at just above 14.5 billion bushels and soybeans at just shy of 4.0 billion bushels.
Those would be incremental changes from the September forecast – corn up 1 percent and soybeans up 2 percent. But each crop would be vastly larger, around 600 million bushels larger, than the old mark. The corn crop would be 4 percent larger than the 13.925 billion bushels harvested last year and the soybean crop would be 18 percent larger.
If the harvest is that big, U.S. stockpiles would swell by tens of millions of bushels. Abundant supplies will assure low commodity prices for at least one year into the future and possibly several years. At present, the farm-gate price for this year’s corn crop is forecast to be the lowest in eight years at $3.50 a bushel and soybeans would be lowest in five years. Low feed prices will benefit cattle, hog and poultry producers but reduce the value of the corn and soybean crops sharply.