USDA Corrects Corn Production, Will Lift Prices

Stronger cash corn prices are being predicted as a result of unprecedented corrections to an official crop report Tuesday by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The report said that U.S. farmers will probably harvest about 1 million acres less of corn than they said in the last report, with soybeans also being much less than the previous report.

What this effectively does is cut expected production by close to 1.5 percent than what was projected on October 10.

"Corn production is forecast at 12.033 billion bushels, down 167 million from the Oct. 10 forecast," said the USDA. "Soybean production is forecast at 2.938 billion bushels, up slightly from the September forecast, and up 10% from last year. If realized, this will be the fourth largest production on record."

As a result of the corrections, corn will ending stocks of about 1.088 billion bushels, a drop of 6 percent. That should push corn prices up a little going ahead.

With the new statistics, expectations are the average bushel of corn will increase by about 5 cents to $4.25 to $5.25 a bushel.

For only the third time since 1980, over 60 percent of the corn crop in the U.S. still has to be picked as of October 26.