The USDA made some minimal tweaks to its U.S. carryout estimates in its February WASDE report while making some cuts to corn and soybean forecasts for South America.
The February report released Tuesday left its ending stocks estimates for U.S. corn and soybeans unchanged from the January report, which tripped up some analysts who had predicted reductions for both.
Analysts said it appeared the report overall was not particularly controversial although the reductions in South America?s corn and soybean production could encourage the bulls while waiting
The report kept the corn carryout at 1.54 billion bushels (bbu) as opposed to the analysts? average of 1.52 bbu. The soybean estimate was unchanged at 380 million bushels (mbu) compared to the prediction of 374 mbu.
The wheat ending stocks for the United States were lowered to 794 mbu from 798 mbu in January.
Global ending stocks were lower than in January and came in below expectations:
Corn fell to 290.31 million metric tons (MT) worldwide from 293.34 million MT in the January report and missed the average projection of 292.52 million MT. Soybean ending stocks were cut to 124.34 million MT from 128.57 million MT, confounding analysts who had expected a slight decrease to 127.70 million MT. Wheat stocks narrowly missed estimates with a slight decline to 257.56 million MT.
South America?s production forecasts were slightly lower for Brazil while dry weather took a bite out of the outlook for Argentina.
The USDA lowered Argentina?s corn by 1 million MT to 50 million MT for corn and dropped soybeans to 49 million MT from 52 million MT in the January report.
Brazil?s prodigious soybean crop was estimated at 169 million MT, unchanged from the January report and fractionally lower than analysts had predicted. The corn harvest was projected at 126 million MT, down 1 million MT from last month and a tad below expectations.
Source: USDA, Reuters