The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) on June 28 said domestic stocks of wheat, corn and soybeans on June 1 were up more than 20% from a year earlier.
The USDA, in its quarterly Grain Stocks report, estimated June 1 old-crop all wheat stocks, which comprise the 2024 carryover, at 702 million bushels, up 23% from June 1, 2023, including 139 million bushels on farms, up 12%, and 563 million bushels off farms, up 27%. March-May indicated disappearance of wheat was 387 million bushels, up 4% from the same period last year.
The June 1 stocks report defines the carryout for the 2023-24 marketing year. That wheat stock estimates were raised from the USDA’s June 12 monthly World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates report suggests a smaller feed usage number than the USDA previously articulated, said Bill Lapp, founder and president of Advanced Economic Solutions, Omaha, Nebraska, US.
“Wheat ending stocks were 688 million bushels in the last WASDE, and the actual number now is 702 million bushels,” he said. “If nothing on the other uses changes or imports change, then we end up with a 14 million bushels less feed and residual use, something on the order of 76 million bushels. Another year of relatively small feed and residual use. The USDA was a little bit off in their estimate, and I would say the USDA had a pretty good handle on stocks by class at the end of the previous year.”
Lower-than-expected planted acreage and a downward revision in winter wheat planted acreage was concurrent with an upward revision to harvested acreage projections.
“Kind of a mix there, and it’s a little bit bigger crop than we had previously anticipated,” Lapp said. “If the yields stay the same, we would have had a bigger crop on June 12 based on the acreage update here. And a total of 47.2 million all wheat planted acres was lower than USDA was projecting in June, but the 38.8 million harvested acres is an increase. So far, reports of what has been harvested are generally better than we thought. I would lean in favor of saying we’re going to have a bigger hard red winter wheat crop than USDA said last month. If you’ve got more stocks to begin with and a bigger crop forthcoming, that’s a good argument to say we’ll be over 800 million bushels for 2024-25 ending stocks versus the June estimate of 758 million bushels.”
Durum wheat stocks in the June 28 report were 21.1 million bushels, down 24% from a year ago, including 9.99 million bushels on farms, down 22%, and 11.1 million bushels off farms, down 26%. March-May disappearance of durum was indicated at 15.3 million bushels, up 90% from the same period in 2023.
Corn stocks in all positions on June 1 were estimated at 4.993 billion bushels, up 22% from a year earlier, including 3.026 billion on farms, up 37%, and 1.967 billion off farms, up 4%. Indicated disappearance of corn during the March-May period was 3.36 billion bushels, down 2% compared with 3.29 billion bushels during the same period on 2023.
“That probably means the USDA will have to lower their feed and residual number in the July 12 WASDE by 25 million or 50 million, and that’ll go right to the ending stocks of corn for 2023-24,” Lapp said. “Netting out all the other uses, this gives us an idea of how much, after nine months of the year, we know we’ve fed, and it looks like the USDA forecast may be a freckle heavy.”
Soybean stocks on June 1 were estimated at 970 million bushels, up 22% from June 1, 2023, including 466 million bushels on farms, up 44%, and 504 million bushels off farms, up 6%. March-May soybean disappearance was indicated at 875 million bushels, down 2% from the same period a year earlier.
“With those numbers, supplies are a little bit tighter than the USDA probably had been anticipating,” Lapp said. “I don’t think the residuals get changed for old crop, and we get a little bit smaller new crop, but it depends a lot on what they do with usage. It’s a big goose egg for 2024-25 soybean sales to China so far. We haven’t sold any, and yet the USDA’s got a forecast increase of 125 million bushels, so that’s something to wrestle with that might suggest ending stocks going up from the 455 million USDA currently has projected as of June for the 2024-25 crop year.”
USDA all wheat, corn and soybean stocks were within the range but above the average of analysts’ pre-report expectations.