Market Outlook for Corn and Soybeans

Farmers, as we enter the last half of May, are nearing the end of the spring planting season and they are turning their attention again to the marketplace. Todd Gleason has more on how one agricultural economist sees prices playing out for the year.

We’ll start with the last numbers USDA publishes in the Supply and Demand tables for each commodity, the season’s average price. For corn, that number - at the midpoint - is $3.80. University of Illinois Agricultural Economist Todd Hubbs is a bit more optimistic. He has it at $4.05. His soybean price, however, is less than USDA’s. The agency has it at $10.00 a bushel. Hubbs puts it at $9.45. The difference in viewpoint says Hubbs lands squarely on soybean exports, “When we look forward to 18/19 the 2.29 billion bushel USDA projection seems a bit high especially when you consider the size of the Brazilian soybean crop and China’s aspiration to increase domestic soybean production while cutting back on imports for the first time in over a decade. It is unclear if China can pull this off, but I’ve got exports at 2.20 billion bushels in 18/19 and that may be generous considering whats going on currently in the market.”



So, Todd Hubbs soybean export figure is 90 million bushels lower than USDA’s for the coming marketing season. It’s lower for the current marketing year, too. All-in-all his soybean supply & demand table puts the new crop ending stocks at 562 million bushels. That’s a far cry from the much more optimistic USDA 415 million bushels projection and the reason his price projection is 55 cents a bushel lower than USDA’s. Again USDA is $10.00, Hubbs is at $9.45. His corn number swings in the opposite direction.

USDA, in the May reports, projected the price of new crop corn at $3.80. Hubbs is at $4.05. The reason why is pretty simple. Hubbs says he uses a lower yield trend line yield, "The main difference between my projections and USDA is the trend yield number. We sit at 171.4 whereas USDA has it a 174 bushels to the acre and the final yield makes a big difference in the consumption pattern and the final price.



Again, USDA is at 174 bushels to the acre and Todd Hubbs is using 171.4. Both numbers are calculated from the same USDA yield data set. USDA uses a smaller subset starting at about the time Bt corn was introduced. Hubbs’ set goes back a couple more decades, and consequently, his yield number is lower. The resulting price difference in the supply & demand tables for new crop corn is $3.80 for USDA and $4.05 for Hubbs.