The grains are trading slightly lower today with corn down 2 cents, soybeans down 4 1/4 cents and wheat down 5 cents going into this morning’s pause in trade. Today at 11 AM CST the USDA will release its Prospective Plantings report as well as the Quarterly Grain stocks figures. Traders are looking for decreased corn acreage and increased soybean acres in this year’s report.
Here are the analyst expectations for this year’s prospective plantings report:
Corn Soybean
Last Year 90.6 83.7
Reuters Poll 88.7 85.9
Lanworth 88.2 85.5
Informa Economics 88.5 87.5
Farm Futures Magazine 88.34 87.25
Above table is in Million Acres
The expectations for the quarterly grain stocks as of March 1st are as follows. For corn the average analyst guess pegs quarterly grain stocks at 7.609 billion bushels with the highest estimate at 7.8 billion and the lowest estimate at 7.459 billion bushels. Wheat stocks are expected to be around 1.140 billion bushels with a range of analyst guesses from 1.2 billion bushels to 1.083 billion bushels. Soybean stocks are expected to be around 1.346 billion bushels with a range of guesses from 1.404 - 1.273 billion bushels.
Winter wheat crop conditions were released today, showing Kansas wheat in good to excellent condition fell to 39 percent down from 41 percent last week. South Dakota wheat rated good to excellent fell to 35 percent from 49 percent a month ago and Nebraska wheat fell to 34 percent from 62 percent last month. Of the states that released their wheat crop conditions report Colorado, Montana, Arkansas, North Carolina and Illinois all saw improved conditions. Illinois wheat conditions improved to 52 percent from 47 a week a month ago, while Colorado conditions increased to 58 percent from 47 percent a week ago.
Export inspections were released yesterday showing that 762,276 metric tons of corn was inspected this week, behind the analyst expectations of 800,000-950,000 metric tons. Wheat also fell short of analyst expectations with 322,016 metric tons inspected compared to expectations between 400,000-550,000 metric tons. Soybeans were the only grain that out performed analyst expectations with 655,720 metric tons compared to expectations of only 450,000-600,000 metric tons.
