The USDA released its October Crop Production and WASDE (World Agricultural Supply And Demand Estimates) report on Thursday, October 10.

Neil Townsend is is the Chief Market Analyst with FarmLink Marketing Solutions.

"There weren't any really dramatic changes," he said. "I would say in general we were talking about a little bit bearish for corn, a little bit bullish for soybeans, and neutral, generally, on wheat. The big change was that for corn they kind of defied market expectations and they took the yield up ever so slightly, just by 0.2 bushels an acre."

U.S. corn yields are expected to average 168.4 bushels per harvested acre, while total corn production is forecast at 13.8 billion bushels.

Townsend says heavy snowfall amounts in the Dakotas is creating a lot of uncertainty surrounding yield expectations.

"It's the early days of harvest for row crops, for corn and soybeans. The main concern is that there's a certain amount of the acres, much, much higher than normal, that are immature and not ready to be harvested. With the weather patterns they've been having, there is some concern...There's going to be some heavy snowfall in places like North Dakota and South Dakota. Is that going to lay the corn flat or lay the soybeans flat? That could have an impact on yield. There's still more uncertainty at this time of year than there generally is."

Another item in the report that caught Townsend's attention was that the Russian wheat crop was left untouched and was not raised.

 

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