Darin Newsom

As for old-crop soybean ending stocks, I'm undecided on my expectations. Seasonally, this is when USDA begins to accelerate its decrease, acknowledging in numbers without acknowledging in words that it systematically underestimated demand or overestimated supply. The previous four marketing years have seen an average decrease of 20 million bushels (mb) in USDA's old-crop ending stocks guess, with the average pre-report estimate coming in only 9 mb below USDA's April guess of 550 mb.

Turning our attention to corn, we see USDA with a new domestic ending stocks estimate of 2.182 bb. This is 55 mb above its March estimate of 2.127 bb, created by a 5 mb decrease in food/seed/industrial demand and a 50 mb decrease in feed/residual demand. Export demand was left unchanged at 2.225 bb, despite the most recent update showing a shipment pace of 1.927 bb, or 298 mb below USDA.

Why? The wild card is U.S. ending stocks. Pre-report estimates for U.S. corn came in at 2.192 billion bushels, up 55 million from USDA's March guess of 2.127 bb. If realized, this would be but a small step toward my post-Quarterly Stocks calculation of domestic ending stocks eventually coming in between 2.66 bb and 2.88 bb (based on four-year and 11-year averages). As of this past Thursday's weekly export sales and shipment update, total shipments of corn were 954 mb.