From DTN Progressive Farmer:
USDA's Acreage and June 1 Grain Stocks reports will be released at 11 a.m. CDT Wednesday, June 30, and are known for their perennial impact on corn and soybean prices, at least for the day. In the past five years, December corn and November soybeans recorded double-digit price responses to USDA's June 30 reports in every year but 2018.
Many of us still shake our heads over USDA's high corn estimate in 2019, but the record does show that USDA's Acreage estimates have a 90% confidence interval of 1.7% over the past 20 years -- a fairly low margin of error. Even so, USDA tended to be too high in 16 of the past 20 years.
For soybeans, the 90% confidence interval is higher, at 3.0%, and the tendency has been to be too high in 13 of the past 20 years. USDA's habit of overshooting planting estimates for both corn and soybeans has been a sore spot for producers, contributing to lower-than-needed pre-harvest prices.
Corn and soybean planting estimates are sometimes revised in the October Crop Production report with the help of other supporting data, such as Farm Service Agency reports.
PLANTED ACREAGE
USDA's current planting estimate for corn stands at 91.1 million acres. This time around, many think that is too low given this year's high prices and drier planting conditions. Dow Jones' survey of analysts expects USDA to estimate 93.82 million acres of planted corn in 2021, the most since 94.0 million acres were planted in 2016. If true, corn plantings would be up from 90.82 million acres last year, and this suggests a 15.2 billion bushel (bb) corn crop, using a yield of 177 bushels per acre (bpa)....
....MUCH MORE
