USDA report features old-crop tweaks

CHARLOTTE, Mich. — June agricultural supply and demand reports are typically focused more on old-crop demand adjustments and that was the case in the June 12 estimates from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

“We look at production estimates around the world and things like that, but from overall standpoint, it’s very rare to get a June surprise. We’ll get the quarterly stocks numbers and updated planted acres out at the end of the month,” said Angie Setzer, copartner at Consus Ag consulting with Karl Setzer.

The Setzers hosted a live podcast on X, formerly Twitter, as the USDA rolled out the new supply and demand estimates.

What were the numbers that stood out for the corn market in the June 12 report?

Angie: Old-crop corn carryout came in at 1.365 billion. The average trade estimate for the corn ending stocks was at 1.392 billion bushel with a range of about 1.315 to 1.450 billion.

Old-crop exports were increased 50 million bushels to 2.65 billion bushels, and that took the carryout down to 1.365 million. Feed and residual was left unchanged from last month at 5.775 billion, and ethanol was unchanged.

New-crop carryout saw 50 million bushel reduction as a result, as well, at 1.750. That was about 40 million bushels lower than what traders were anticipating.

The market right now is acting like it didn’t even know there was a report, so that’s fun.

The most recent supply and demand reports have been quiet from a soybean standpoint. What did this report show us?

Angie: U.S. soybean carryout came in with no changes across the board with old-crop carryout at 350 million bushels and 295 million bushels for the new crop. Traders were expecting some minor shifts, but there wasn’t much of anything there.

Were there any changes on the domestic wheat balance sheet?

Angie: On the wheat side of things, old-crop carryout came in at 841 million bushels, which is inline with last month. No changes there.

New-crop wheat carryout came in lower than expected at 898 million bushels. Traders were expecting about 923 million. USDA bumped up new crop exports by 25 million bushels.

We’ll get an update to that number at the end of the month when we get the quarterly stocks figure for June 1. They’ll go ahead and probably make whatever adjustments we need to in old-crop wheat on that side.

Turning to the global market, what were some of the highlights?

Karl: The global numbers were pretty much status quo.

Angie: Global wheat carryout came in 3 million metric tons lower for 2025-2026. That was a little bit of surprise. We were expecting 265 million.

Karl: Argentine soybean production came in unchanged for 2025-2026. They left that at 48.5 million. Brazil soybean production was left at 175 million metric tons. No surprise there.

Angie: Global corn carryout was a little lower than expected at 275 million metric tons and traders were expecting 278.8 million. New-crop carryout came in at 275.24 million.

Karl: Brazil’s 2024-2025 corn production was left at 130 million and analysts were expecting that to bump up to about 132 million. That’s a little bit of a surprise. There was a lot of tweaking in this report, but not many overall changes. There was nothing really exciting on the global side from the South American numbers.

Angie: Overall globally ending stocks were slightly lower than what traders were anticipating for corn, soybeans and wheat.

World soybean numbers came in at 125.3 million metric tons for 2025-2026 and traders were expecting right around 124.54. The only number that came in higher than expected would have been global soybean numbers, and that was only by about 1 million metric ton, not really much of anything big there and really not looking at any sort of major changes on that side.