Grain > Commentary > 1-11-2024

1/11/2024

Jan 11, 2024

Thursday's session was a long, slow grind and it appeared most had opted to sit on the sidelines one day ahead of the USDA report.  The price action we did see was some basic positioning trade.  For the first time since December 19, the USDA made a flash sale announcement this morning.  This confirmed sale was for 175,000 tonnes of corn for delivery to Mexico during the 2023/24 marketing year.  The only other item of note today was the weekly net export sales report and it didn't really offer us much.  Corn sales were on the low-end of expectations with 488k tonnes sold and soybeans sales were a miss at 280k tonnes.  Trade does not expect to see much of a shakeup in numbers for tomorrow's report and pre-report estimates are mostly priced in so if we do see a drop in U.S. or South American crop production from the USDA, it may not ignite the rally you expect to see. 

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1/12/2026
Jan 12, 2026
Well, the USDA report had a bit of a surprise today and not in a good way.  Not only did they increase the 2025 corn yield, from 186.0 to 186.5, they also increased Harvest Acres from 90 million to 91.3 million.  That raised the total corn production to 17.021 billion, up an additional 269 million bushels from their previous estimate.  U.S. Ending Stocks are now estimated at 2.227 bbu, vs. 2.209 in Dec.  Report trade guesses were at 1.97 bbu.
11/14/2025
Nov 14, 2025
It was USDA report day today and overall, it was bearish for both corn and beans.  Corn Yield was only reduced by .7 bpa down to 186 bpa.  The market was expecting closer to 184 bpa.  Corn production is estimated at 16.752 billion vs 16.814 billion in September.  They raised exports 100 million, which is debatable, but possible.  Ending stocks on corn were estimated at 2.154 billion bushels, which is up 44 million from September and about 29 million more than the market expected. 
9/12/2025
Sep 12, 2025
USDA report day.  Corn and beans were trading higher pre-report on thoughts of a reduction to yields.  Well....we got what we were thinking but the USDA decided to throw a twist into the mix.  The 25/26 corn yield decreased slightly less than expected by 2.1 bu to 186.7 bpa, but they gave us the largest planted acreage shift on this report in at least the last 20 years (+1.4 mil acres) spurred an increase in production to 16,814 mbu.  25/26 ending stocks were slightly lowered by 7 mbu to 2,110 mbu.