USDA Confirms Smaller Corn Crop in September WASDE

Nelson: Did USDA confirm expectations in corn? Answer to that is yes. USDA reduced the national corn yield from 180.7 to 178 and a half bushels per acre. And that brought our ending stocks down to 1.6 billion bushels. That drop in yield wasn't as low as the Pro Farmer expectations of 173 bushels per acre, but it did validate expectations that August conditions had dropped yields.

Nelson: Soybeans were more supportive on the demand side. USDA increased yields very slightly, just 0.1 bushels per acre. Now that boosted production a little bit, but the bigger picture here was that they reduced ending stocks from 320 million down to 310 million bushels.

Nelson: It's more of a global story there. The U.S. numbers were pretty well steady, but a larger crop from some of the key export areas, looking at Australia, Canada, Ukraine, these kind of pushed global ending stocks for wheat higher. The bottom line to all of this is that USDA validated trade expectations.