USDA shocked the market this morning as it projected the national corn yield at 153 bu./acre. Leading up the report, Jerry Gulke, President of the Gulke Group, says the market was trading yield expectations in the 155 bu./acre range.
They’ve recognized there’s a problem out there. I think they wanted to get ahead of it a little bit for fear of being criticized,” Gulke says. “They left the acres the same, but lowered the harvested acres by 500,000. What was interesting in the corn was they didn’t lower any of the acres in those four states (North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana and Minnesota) they resurveyed.”
Interestingly, the majority of the prevent planting in those states was in the Durum and spring wheat markets. Corn carried the spring in the traditional wheat markets of the northern plains.
In their first on-camera interview since admitting a processing error in the September USDA Crop Report data, officials clarified that the mistake was a computer weighting issue.
Scott Varilek with Kooima Kooima Varilek says the outside market news has been a factor in cattle but the main catalyst for the selling has been sharply lower cash trade which started breaking early in the week.
