USDA’s corn production hike larger than expected

CHARLOTTE, Mich. — The market was anticipating a larger corn crop leading up to the Aug. 12 crop production estimates, and that’s what the trade got — and then some — in both yield and acreage.

“Coming into the report, everyone was pretty bullish on crop size for corn yield. USDA in July was at 181 bushels per acre. That was the trend-line yield number. The average trade guess coming into the Aug. 12 report was 184.4, 5 bushels higher than where we finished last year,” said Angie Setzer, Consus Ag Consulting.

“I think most everyone was kind of anticipating 185, 186, at least just from what I’m hearing amongst folks who are chattering along about it.”

Angie and Karl Setzer, Consus Ag copartners, hosted a live podcast on X as the U.S. Department of Agriculture released the first survey-based crop production report for this growing season, along with the supply and demand estimates report.

The corn numbers headlined the report. What were some of the key highlights?

Angie: Corn carryout came in at 2.7 billion bushels, much higher than anticipated. Corn yield is at 188.8 bushels per acre, 4.5 bushels higher than what traders expected. That’s pretty amazing.

Corn area planted is at 97.3 million acres, and area harvested of 88.7 million acres, a 2 million acre increase from last month. I guess they really put the pedal to the metal.

Old corn stocks ending stocks came in at 1.305 billion bushels. Total production of 16.742 billion bushels is up about 1 billion bushels from last month’s estimate.

Ethanol usage is up 100 million bushels. Feed and residual usage is up about 300 million. Exports are up 200 million.

So, that chewed into a lot of that production number, but it still put carryout about 200 million bushels higher than what traders were expecting at 2.117 billion.

Was it a different story for domestic soybeans in the USDA reports?

Angie: We saw a big reduction in acres that wasn’t expected — 2.5 million acres less — to 80.1 million.

USDA did bump the soybean yield up, which will be an interesting dynamic to see, depending on how we finish August.

But with that higher yield, a record yield 53.6 bushels per acre on 80.1 million acres harvested, down 2.5 million acres, we’re going to end up with a 290 million bushel carryout.

Old crop ending stocks came in at 330 million bushels, down 20 million from last month. Crush unchanged month over month. Export were reduced again. This time by 40 million bushels.

USDA has now cut exports year-over-year 170 million bushels. It’s a pretty aggressive cut to exports.

USDA made a 40-million bushel cut in this report, and even then we have a 290 million bushel carryout projected for new crop.

Were there any major changes in the global supply and demand crop balance sheets?

Karl: Production-wise, no major changes to anything in South America’s soybeans or corn. The only one we did see, the Argentine soybean crop was bumped up 1 million metric tons and now at 50.9. The Ukraine corn crop came out at 32 million metric tons, up from 30.5 last month.

World corn carryout is 282.54 million metric tons, up 5.5 million metric tons from what we had in July. World wheat carryout of 260.08 million metric tons is down 1.4 million from July.

The global soybean carryout number — this is the big one — at 124.9 million tons. The trade was expecting 127.8. So, it was 3 million metric tons under the world estimate, and down from that 126.07 last month.

When you look at the global soybean numbers and the domestic numbers, they’re friendly.

Looking at the global numbers, obviously the corn is a little more bearish, but I think the negativity in corn is spilling over into the soy complex right now.

Angie: If you look at the global corn number, and where the growth in ending stocks is, it’s entirely in the U.S.

If you look at it from a metric ton standpoint, ending stocks are currently projected in the U.S. at 53.77 million metric tons, up from 42.17 million that was put out there for the 2025-2026 crop in July.

Global stocks are up simply as a result of the U.S. increase. Actually you’re seeing a bit in the way of reduction there on that side of global stocks versus U.S. increase. It’s all based on the U.S crop and how big it is when it comes off.

We did see China make an adjustment on carry-in, so we could see a slight reduction there on top of it for corn. The rest of the world numbers really were driven by the U.S.

Karl: The global soy meal carryout came in at 18.07 million metric tons for 2025-2026. That was down from 18.57 million metric tons prior. Now, that’s not a huge drop, but it’s a drop.

For global soy oil, carryout is at 5.96 million metric tons, just the hair under the 5.97 million from a month ago.

Everything held steady in that soy complex. You can make that a pretty friendly spin pretty quickly, for the numbers we saw there.