Wednesday, May 11, 2011

USDA Releases WASDE Report:: Corn Reserves May Revive on Acreage Gains as Soy, Wheat [stocks] to Fall, U.S. Says

Corn is up 2 3/4 cents, wheat 4 3/4 cents and beans are down 3 1/2 cents.
From Bloomberg:
U.S. corn reserves before the 2012 harvest may rebound from a 15-year low after higher prices spur farmers to boost acres, the government said. Soybean and wheat inventories may fall next year.

Unsold supplies of U.S. corn will rise 23 percent to 900 million bushels (22.85 million metric tons) by Aug. 31, 2012, from a revised 730 million projected for this year, the lowest since 1996, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said today in a report. The average estimate of 30 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg News was 822 million bushels.

The USDA “needs to encourage the producers out there to fight all the battles they can to get this stuff planted,” said Jerry Gidel, a market analyst for North American Risk Management Services Inc. in Chicago. “We need every bushel” to meet rising demand, he said.

Corn prices surged 91 percent on the Chicago Board of Trade in the year ended yesterday, reaching a 31-month high of $7.8875 a bushel on April 11. Yesterday, futures for July delivery were little changed at $7.0725 a bushel.

Larger corn inventories may lead to lower costs for companies including hog-processor Smithfield Foods Inc. (SFD) and poultry-producer Sanderson Farms Inc. Ethanol makers such as Archer Daniels Midland Co. may also see lower expenses. The U.S. is the world’s biggest producer and exporter of corn.

Increased Acreage
In a survey released in March, U.S. farmers indicated they planned to sow 92.178 million acres with corn this year, up 4.5 percent from a year earlier. That crop will be harvested in the marketing year beginning Sept. 1...MORE
Here's the USDA's World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimate.
We'll be coming back to this later today.