Corn production expected to be big story in USDA report Friday

(American Ag Radio Network) – The lastest Crop Production, Crop Production Annual Summary, Quarterly Grain Stocks, Winter Wheat Seedings and World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates reports will be released by USDA at 11 a.m. Central tomorrow. The report numbers are considered final, even while revisions will continue to be made.

The big story in crop production is that traders are expecting corn production to drop 99 million bushels to 10.626 billion bushels despite a slight uptick in national average yield to 122.4 bushels per acre. Given these numbers, harvested acres would be projected to drop by 900,000 from December. This could be the main point of controversy to market bulls who believe the difference between harvested and planted should be closer to the 14 percent seen during both the 1988 and 1983 droughts.

Similar to production, the more interesting domestic ending stocks table should be seen in corn as pre-report estimates are showing an increase of 20 million bushels.

For domestic soybean ending stocks, an increase by 5 million bushels is expected, though production is estimated to increase by 28 million bushels.

Winter wheat acres for the 2013-2014 marketing year are expected to come in at 42.6 million acres. That is a 3 percent increase over what was planted in 2012.

Source: DTN Ag News