Market Braces for September Crop and Supply Demand Reports

Wednesday morning USDA releases more numbers that grain market analysts anxiously await. It’s the September monthly supply and demand and crop production reports. The private estimates are expecting another drop in corn and soybean yields, according to Katie Darr of Crestview Commodities.

“The average trade estimate coming in for corn yield is 120.6 bushels per acre. Last month USDA called it 123.4 so expecting a little bit of reduction there. And then on beans just a little bit below last month’s 36.1. The average guess is now just under 36.”

Darr says trade guesses for production also indicate a reduction with corn averaging 10.4 billion bushels and soybeans at 2.638 billion bushels.

She adds there is always the possibility of surprising numbers that greatly impact the futures market.

“Yes I think so. As we get into corn harvest it seems to be the opposite of beans. The beans come in a little bit better than expected so far from what we’ve heard, and the corn has not been anything to get excited about to the upside. The range of estimates on the corn from private analysts has about 117.6 as the lowest. So if we see something toward the lower end of that or even lower than that, then we could see corn continue to spike.”

Jim riley at Riley Trading will be closely watching two areas of the report. One is demand, and “the other thing I’d like to see is harvested acres dropped considerably, but I doubt if they’ll bring out harvested acres. Something tells me they just won’t do that yet. And of course their yield figures will have weight, but I don’t think the yield figures are going to have the overall weight of what they could do with harvested acres and what they may or may not do with demand.”

USDA did offer an August harvested acres number but often times that is not revised until October. When the number does get revised Riley expects quite a drop due to four times the normal amount of corn chopped for silage this year and the dramatic increase of corn destroyed because of drought.[audio:https://www.hoosieragtoday.com//wp-content/uploads//2012/09/September-report-expectations.mp3|titles=September report expectations]