U.S. farmers are headed for record-breaking harvests this fall, so large that corn and soybean surpluses will be the largest in years, analysts say in surveys ahead of the Aug 12 crop report. The report, often called the most important crop report of the year, carries USDA’s first estimate of the harvest and is based on spot checks of fields and a survey of 24,000 growers.
Surveys by Bloomberg and Reuters show analysts, on average, expect 14.25 billion bushels of corn and 3.82 billion bushels of soybeans. If correct, the corn crop would be 2 percent larger than the 2013 record and soybeans would 12 percent larger than the 2009 record.
Stockpiles would balloon to the largest in several years, according to analysts. The soybean “carryover” at the end of the 2014/15 marketing year would be around 410 million bushels, three times larger than at the start of the year. The corn carryover, up 62 percent from this marketing year, would top 2 billion bushels for the first time in 10 years. USDA has projected sharp declines in the average farm-gate price because of mammoth supplies.