The U.S. Department of Agriculture chose to kick the can down the road in the March World Agriculture Supply and Demand Estimates (WASDE) Report. The agency didn’t change any of the ending stocks figures from February leaving corn at 1.502 billion bushels (bb), soybean stocks at 120 million bushels (mb) and wheat at 836 mb.
Jim McCormick with Agmarket.Net says USDA is unlikely to make revisions to the U.S. balance sheets until May. “They’ll likely wait until we get the first new crop production and ending stocks estimates to cushion the bullishness of the old crop supplies. I think USDA will eventually have to take the soybean ending stocks below pipeline supplies at sub-100 million bushels.”
Where USDA did make some adjustments was in the world numbers, albeit slight. World ending stocks on soybeans were raised .3 mmt to 83.7 mmt. The agency pegged Brazilian soybean production at 134 million metric tons (mmt), which is a 1 mmt increase from last month. McCormick says, “If there was any surprise in the report it was Brazil’s soybean crop estimate, considering all the production issues they’ve had tied to too much rain in the central part of the country.” Meanwhile, Argentina production was lowered by a .5 mmt to 47.5 mmt, which is more realistic with the ongoing dryness in the country.
South American corn production was left unchanged by USDA, while global corn ending stocks, at 287.7 million tons, are up 1.1 million from last month, which was above trade projections.
Global wheat ending stocks were lowered by 3 mmt to 301.2 mmt, mostly due to higher feed and residual use for China.
