USDA is set to release its latest Crop Production and World Supply and Demand Estimates (WASDE) on Friday. Ahead of the report, USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) issued a notice setting the state for possible planted or harvested acreage adjustments to corn and soybeans this week.
In the news release, NASS says the review typically takes place in October. The September report typically focuses on possible planted or harvested acreage changes for southern crops such as cotton, peanuts and rice. The NASS notice announced the adjustments to planted or harvested acres could come for corn, cotton, peanuts, rice, sorghum, soybeans and sugarbeets. NASS says the change will happen if updated data warrant a change. This type of adjustment, for such a broad range of crops, is typically made in the October report.
“This acreage thing is just such a boondoggle every year,” says Chip Nellinger of Blue Reef Agri-Marketing. “It’s so confusing and says, ‘let’s just change the rules of the game in midstream a week before the the first major crop report out.’ I think that if anyone can tell you how the USDA reconciles the NASS data and crop insurance data, they’re going to be lying to you. I don’t think USDA can even tell you that within their four walls of their office in Washington DC, and this announcement does open the door to uncertainty.”
Sam Hudson of CornBelt Marketing also says the NASS notice ahead of the report caused fear and uncertainty.
“I’m scratching my head and thinking what is the satellite photo tell you in June this year? I think in a year like 2019, that was arguable, but why are we going to go back and try to change planted acreage in a September report,” says Hudson. “To me it’s something you know, wait longer term and get the number right as opposed sending the trade into a bit of a frenzy and trying to figure out what it all means.”
While it’s not clear if any changes will be made, NASS says if updated data reveals new information, NASS will update that in its September report this week. And it’s not just acreage adjustments that could be on deck this week. USDA will also release results from its first field surveys of the year.
Nellinger says considering the wild weather that occurred in August across the Midwest, his crop production outlook hasn’t changed much, but it definitely hasn’t improved.
‘We had brutally hot August for a lot of areas without much rain,” says Nellinger. “And so we’re speeding this crop to maturity in a lot of areas, and that usually is at the sake or at the expense of yield. So, I think that as far as I’m concerned, I’m just kind of still in the camp of where the USDA was in August, but this will be a good test because the September crop report is the first time that they’re going to go out and actually do field surveys, weigh ears, count populations, and take harvested data if the field has been harvested.”
“Now that we have this wrinkle with acreage, I would expect some sort of a yield adjustment on corn, especially, but I don’t know the number can change so much in this report that it’s going to have this overwhelming effect on the markets, specially after what’s happened here on the export side of things. That’s been the bigger ocus for me.”
Hudson says if USDA doesn’t produce a yield bump in the report this week, he says that will keeps supplies very tight.
