The price outlook for wheat growers and corn producers brightened Thursday, but soybean farmers found no break in the clouds.
“Soybeans are the black and blue division of commodity markets,” said Dale Durchholz, analyst with AgriVisor, a market advisory service in Bloomington that is associated with the Illinois Farm Bureau.
His dour assessment followed a series of Agriculture Department crop reports on production, supply, demand and, in the case of wheat, estimated acreage planted last fall.
The government said wheat planting increased only marginally from a year earlier; corn exports are expanding, which will cut down on the stockpile from last year’s record crop; and the soybean market is burdened by large U.S. supplies plus the prospect of bumper crops in South America this spring.
The USDA report showed 49.6 million acres were seeded to winter wheat, less than the 51.8 million estimated by trade analysts, which spurred a rally in wheat futures prices on the Chicago Board of Trade. Corn prices also advanced because of the USDA’s projection of increased demand at home and abroad. Meanwhile, soybean futures fell for practically all contracts.
At the close, July wheat, which is the first contract reflecting the new crop, rose 4 1/4 cents, closing at $3.45 a bushel, and September jumped 6 1/4 cents, settling at $3.52 1/4. March corn pushed ahead by 1 3/4 cents, to $2.34 1/4, and December gained 1 1/4 cents, to $2.53 1/4. November soybeans eased 1 cent, to $5.85 3/4, and the nearby January contract slipped 1 1/4 cents, to $5.50.
“I was surprised that more wheat wasn’t planted, because the prices and the weather were good last fall,” said Martyn Foreman, also an analyst with AgriVisor.
Nationally, winter wheat acreage was up only 1 percent from a year ago. While soft red planting increased 7 percent to 10.6 million acres, acreage of hard red (the type used mostly for bread) slipped 1 percent to 34.8 million.
The USDA, in its final report, raised its estimate for the 1994 corn crop, to 10.1 billion bushels, far ahead of the previous record of 9.48 billion, set in 1992.
More importantly, the department projects a record use of corn for livestock feeding of 5.65 billion bushels in the marketing year ending Aug. 31, while exports are expected to total 1.95 billion bushels, up 200 million bushels from last month’s projection. The USDA now thinks the amount of corn remaining in storage at the end of the marketing year will total 1.65 billion bushels, down from 1.93 billion estimated earlier.
The 1994 soybean crop was also a record at 2.56 billion bushels, but demand hasn’t developed as well as for corn. Durchholz noted that the USDA’s expectation that 510 million bushels will still be in storage Aug. 31 would be the second-largest carryover ever.
