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USDA Grain Report

January 12, 2012 by · Comments Off on USDA Grain Report 

USDA Grain ReportUSDA Grain Report, The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s final report on the 2011 harvest, with increases in Iowa and U.S. production and a larger-than-expected figure for surplus stocks, send corn prices down their 40 cents per bushel limit to $6.11 Thursday morning on the Chicago Board of Trade.

Bryce Knorr of Farm Futures Magazine said “the USDA provided a very bearish surprises for a trade that was leaning the other way.”

Traders had expected the USDA to report ending grain stocks, or surplus, of about 750 million bushels. Instead the USDA said the U.S. has 844 million bushels of corn in surplus storage.

The USDA also said that while grain exports might rise by 50 million bushels this year, it didn’t forecast a major export surge even after reports have come from South America of a major drought during its summer growing season.

Iowa’s final nation-leading yield of 172 bushels per acre in Iowa for corn was up 1 bushel per acre from the December estimate and ahead of the 2010 harvest of 165 bushels per acre.

Soybeans also suffered in the market Thursday, down 33 cents per bushel to $11.69 in the first hour. Both corn and soybeans had rallied from 2011 lows in mid-December on news of the South American drought.

Iowa’s total corn production was set at 2.356 billion bushels, up from 2.153 billion bushels last year but short of the record 2.420 billion bushels set in 2009. Iowa farmers harvested corn on 13.7 million acres, up about 650,000 acres from 2010.

Illinois was runnerup to Iowa among corn producing states, with an average yield of 157 bushels per acre and total 2011 harvest of 1.947 billion bushels.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture on Thursday pegged the national corn harvest at a yield of 147.2 bushels per acre, up slightly from the 146.7 bushels per acre estimate in December but a full 5.6 bushels per acre below the 2010 national harvest.

Corn production in Iowa and throughout the U.S. was hampered in 2011 first by a wet spring which hampered planting in Ohio, Indiana and the Dakotas, then flooding on the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers and then a heat wave in July during pollination.

Total U.S. corn production was increased by 48 million bushels from the December estimate to 12.358 billion bushels.

Iowa’s soybean yield dipped slightly in 2011 to 50.5 bushels per acre from 51 bushels per acre a year earlier.

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