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Today’s USDA planted and harvested acre upward adjustments seems to compensate for World Board’s lower September US corn & soybean yields. This left these two’s US-ending stocks modestly changed from last month and prompted a slightly defensive tone at the CBOT. With the Small Grains Report ahead & no changes in US wheat data, but the USDA did sliced 2023/24 world crops by 6 mmt. Smaller Argentina, Aussie & Canadian crop estimates because of the current El Nino was the reason. They did up Ukraine’s crop slightly this month, but today’s lower world crop and carryover was wheat’s supportive price factor.  

The USDA did lower its US corn yield by 1.3 bu to 173.8 bu, but it was slightly higher than the trade’s 173.5 average estimate. The big surprise was the 774,000 higher US harvested acres with a big 800,000 jump in the WCB (except for 300, 000 cut in Iowa). IlL also sliced 300,000 acres from June while KS and CO also upped their area by 350,000 from June 30. This produced a 15.134 crop up 26 million bu, but the location of these acres aren’t is the highest yield states this year. The only changed ild-crop demand by 5 million rise in exports and left their 2023/24 demand levels unchanged. This produced a very modest 5 million increase in US corn stocks to 2.221 billion bu. The big factor is corn remains the large area and output keeping this year’s stocks up 770 million higher than this year. 

The World data had 2 mmt higher carryover that was passed thru  2023/24.

US soybeans also has lower yield this month, down 0.9 bu to 50.1 bu. However, the USDA harvested area only rose by 95,000 acres which produced a 4.146 billion bu crop. This output was own 59 million from Aug & 11 below the trade’s average est.  The USDA upped old-crop exports bu 10 million slipping stocks by 10 to 250.  However, the USDA changes were the 2023/24 S&D. Their new crop supplies were down 69 million bu, but they decrease 2023/24 crush by 10 million and exports by 35 million bu which reduced new beans’ carryover decline to 220  million vs 245 million in August. They did up the their yearly average price by20 cents to $12.90 this month. 

The big changes were in the world wheat crop output. The USDA’s smaller world carryover at 258.6 mmt was down 7 mmt from August and the smallest stocks since 2014/15’s 244 mmt.

Overall, this month’s US corn and soybean output changes were modest, but this year’s tough weather will likely keep the bears at bay until more country yields begin to surface in the next 2-3 weeks. The USDA’s data this month was just plant/ear counts. The field samples won’t be available for analysis until the Oct & Nov USDA reports. Dec corn's recent lows on the $4.70-73 area and beans 200 day Nov average at 13.30 are prices to watch for potential support near-by. 

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