IOWA CITY, Iowa (RFD News) — The U.S. corn crop is on track for another large year, with current projections pointing to substantial supplies heading into harvest.
Iowa State University agricultural economist Chad Hart says much of the crop cleared the key pollination period in relatively good condition.
“A good part of the crop did get through pollination in a fairly decent spot, so that’s where I’m sitting here going, ‘We’re probably, you know, a little bit below trendline now.’ USDA’s got us at 183 bushels per acre. I have to admit, most of my models are still pointing somewhere in that range, probably in the low 180s, and that would put us with about a 16-billion-bushel corn crop. That would say still a lot of supply, but probably somewhere around a billion bushels less than we created last year.”
Hart says demand is also shaping up well as the market works through the large corn supply.
“That’s why we have seen the markets bounce up fairly significantly a few times over the past few months because when you’re looking at, for example, on the corn side, feed demand remains strong and stable. Ethanol demand remains strong and stable, and export demand has been at record levels now for about 16 months. So, when you put the big three together that way, that tells you we’re going to go through a lot of corn. Same thing is sort of happening now on the soybean side. While we’ve seen some problems with exports, especially to China, we’ve been replacing some of those sales with some internal use.”
Hart expects prices to come down some as harvest ramps up, but says that could change this winter as the demand picture becomes clearer.
