Highlights
Corn planting intentions were 1.74 million less acres than the market expected. Corn inventory on March first were 80 million bushels less than expected. Are those numbers a decisive game changer for the corn price outlook? Yes.
If the market had priced in the expected acres and inventory, which logically, it had, we can immediately take 80 million bushels off the old crop carryout for the past three months due to strong feed use and take another 160 million off the carryout for feed use the remaining six months of the marketing year. That takes the current 2,172 million bushel carryover down to 1,932 million bushel, well below the projected 2+ billion bushels carryout the market has had to deal with the past ten months. Take another 173.5 million bushels off the 2024 corn production due to 964,000 fewer corn acres than USDA projected for 2024 at its Outlook Forum in February with a yield of 180 bushels and just that quick, we are down to a manageable 1,759 million bushels carryover (44 day supply vs 54 now) using a yield 2.7 bushels better than we ever produced before.