USDA released two huge reports on Tuesday: The Quarterly Stocks Report and the Planting Intentions Report.
“Nothing really jumped out at me as being either overly bullish, or overly bearish,” says Karl Setzer with Consus Ag Consulting.
“Total U.S. corn acres this year are estimated at 95.3 million—that would be down 3% or 3.45 million acres from last year,” he says. “That’s actually a few more corn acres that what trade was expecting, which the average estimate was that we’d see about 94 million acres.”
“Soybean acres came in 84.7 million—that’s up 4% from last year, but a little bit lighter than what trade was expecting,” he says. “We were expecting to see about 85 to 85.5 million acres.”
But, Setzer adds that this data may have changed—because many of the farmer surveys were conducted shortly after the U.S. conflict with Iran began.
“In the past month, we’ve seen input prices skyrocket. At the same time, we’ve seen a drop in the available inventory of not only fertilizer inputs, but seed corn, so that number is being questioned as a data was collected in the first two weeks of March,” according to Setzer.
“These planting numbers are going to get a lot of shuffling when the updated revisions are released on June 30,” he says.
Without any major surprises in these reports, what will likely drive the grain markets moving forward?
“The emphasis goes back to U.S. weather now, and that’s where we’re seeing the support today,” says Setzer.
At the close of trade on Tuesday, May Corn was $0.02 higher at $4.57 ¾ — May Soybeans climbed $0.11 ¼ to $11.71 — and May Wheat gained $0.09 ¼ to $6.16 ¼.
CLICK BELOW to hear full analysis from Karl Setzer with Consus Ag Consulting of USDA’s Planting Intentions Report and Quarterly Stocks Report:
