Farm and Ranch September 14, 2005 There were problems of drought in parts of the U.S. corn belt this year but USDA's September crop report is still forecasting a huge corn crop.
Collins: "For corn we raised our production forecast 2.8% to 10.4 billion bushels. The second largest crop ever."
That's USDA's chief economist Keith Collins. Jim Bower, an analyst commenting on the report at a Chicago Board of trade news conference said USDA's number was much larger than the trade expected.
Bower: "Production at 10.639 billion bushels is 338 million above the trade expectations, which is just almost unbelievably out of line in relationship to the trade estimates."
The result of higher production says USDA's Collins, is a lower price projection.
Collins: "We lowered corn from $2.00 a bushel to $1.90 a bushel." 02
USDA says the global outlook for coarse grains in 2005-2006 is for increased production, higher consumption, larger trade and larger stocks relative to last month. And while global ending stocks are up four million tons from last month, they are down 25 million tons from 2004-2005.
USDA made no changes in U.S. barley supply and demand numbers but it did lower its price projection taking a nickel off both the low and high end of the range. The national average barley price is now projected to be $2.10 to $2.50 a bushel. For 2004-2005 it was $2.48 a bushel.
I'm Bob Hoff and that's the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report on the Northwest Ag Information Network.
