U.S. Department of Agriculture officials today (Tuesday) released the Planted Acreage and Quarterly Grain Stocks reports. Grain market analysts seemed taken aback by the somewhat bullish corn outlook.
U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) officials lowered corn acreage, which took Greg McBride, commodities broker with Allendale, by surprise.
?Definitely a big surprise in the corn acreage. (It was) lowered by about five million acres from the March number. We?re sitting 3.2 million (acres) lower than the average guess, and below all other guesses,? McBride said.
Soybean acreage grew by roughly 300,000 acres compared to an expected one-point-two million acre increase. McBride says, “It’s not as bullish as it looks, once you start to factor in the Grain Stocks report.”
?Corn stocks came in at 5.224 billion bushels, which was about 275 million bushels higher than expected. As I was saying, you see an increase in grain stocks and a big decrease in acreage. What that does is offset you by 600- to 700 million rather than the 800 million shown on the corn side of things for acreage,” McBride said.
Overall, grain markets reacted positively. McBride expects gains to remain ahead of the Fourth of July holiday, and encourages producers to sell old crop inventories.
