The USDA expects a reduction in corn sowing areas and an increase in soybean sowing areas in the United States

Yesterday's USDA quarterly report on sowing stocks and forecasts turned out to be unexpected for the market. US soybean and corn stocks were higher than expected, well above last year's, while wheat stocks were much lower.

Yes, as of March 1:

• corn stocks amounted to 199.39 million tons compared to last year's 195.5 million tons and an average analyst estimate of 200 million tons,
• soybean reserves amounted to 52.55 million tons (42.5 million tons last year and 51.8 million tons according to analysts),
• wheat reserves amounted to 27.9 million tons (35.7 million tons last year and 28.4 million tons according to analysts).

According to the USDA, the area under corn in the United States in 2022 will be 89.49 million acres, while analysts estimated them at 92 million acres, and last year they reached 93.4 million acres. This is due to the high cost of fertilizers and higher profitability of soybean production.

Soybean sowing areas will be 90.96 million acres, which is 4.3% more than last year's 87.2 million acres, while analysts estimated them at 88.7 million acres.

The wheat sowing area, according to the USDA, will be 47.35 million acres, which is only 1.4% more than last year's 46.7 million acres, while analysts estimated them at 47.77 million acres. Analysts believe that the sown area of spring wheat will grow to 11.8 million acres amid high world prices, but the USDA forecasts them at 11.2 million acres.

It will be recalled that in March 2020, USDA experts predicted corn sowing areas at 97 million acres, but in fact only 90.8 million acres were sown, so now traders are reacting calmly to the report.

Yesterday at the Chicago SWOT May futures had the following dynamics:

• for corn increased by 1.5% to $ 294.8 / t,
• soybeans fell by 2.9% to $ 594.6 / t,
• for winter wheat fell by 2.1% to $ 369.6 / t.

At the same time, spring wheat in Minneapolis rose by 2% to $ 396.6 / t.

Prices are driven by low export sales to the United States, which in the week of March 18-24 amounted to only 81.3 thousand tons of wheat and 636.8 thousand tons of corn, while soybean sales tripled to 1.3 million tons.