Corn responds strongly to report

Due to a cut in acres from estimates, Thursday’s March 28 USDA report was positive for corn prices.

Wheat did not receive as bullish of a report but did follow corn pretty well. Soybeans were on both sides – down hard early before bouncing back higher on the coat tails of the corn rally.

“The bean number was a little neutral to bearish but it’s not horrible by any means,” Roy Plote of Ag Market.net told The Central Illinois Farm Network.

For grain stocks, corn was 8.347 billion and the guess was for 8.427. That’s a cut of about 80 million bushels which was bullish. Soybean stocks were 1.845 billion bushels and the estimate was 1.828. This was not a surprise. Wheat was 1.087 with the average guess of 1.044, also not a surprise.

Plote notes that Russia and Ukraine have been shipping wheat and we aren’t getting the export business.

For planting estimates, corn came in at 90.036 million acres and the average guess was 91.776, so that’s a little over 1.7 million acres less than expected. This compares to 94.64 million acres last year. Soybeans were at 86.51 million acres and the estimate was 86.53 which is basically right on and up from 83.6 last year. Wheat was 47.498 with estimates at 47.33.