Highlights
Now that the October USDA report has been issued, we can be quite confident that the futures have made their lows for the year. Soybeans did it on May 31st and corn did it on September 19th. The USDA has lowered yields for both beans and corn four consecutive months.
We will get a November production update (yield, harvested acres) from USDA, but there will be no USA production information on the December S&D, just demand changes for USA crops; the USDA will update world production and demand changes. The January 2024 S&D will be the final look at production for 2023 crops until next September when USDA will look back three crop years to see if they need to adjust numbers to fit the September inventory numbers. Last month, USDA reduced the 2022 corn crop by 15 million bushels and the 2022 soybean crop by 6 million bushels, which were included in yesterday’s S&D.
Once again, USDA waited until after the marketing year was over to increase corn for feed use by a huge amount, 2.3% this year, which is 124 million bushels, a three plus days’ worth of use. USDA did raise the average price expected to be paid for new crop corn by 5¢ to $4.95, but lowered the wheat price by 20¢ to $7.30; the bean price was unchanged at $12.90.