Grains –
We have the USDA Outlook Forum on deck for Thur/Fri this week, and early tomorrow morning newswires will report the initial 2017 acreage guesses from USDA Chief Economist Johansson. These are not survey based guesses but rather “economic” based estimates. I’ve spent the past few days looking to see if there are any relationships to exploit in an effort to predict what we might see tomorrow, but I’ve come up empty. That said, I did notice one interesting trend in recent years as these Outlook Forum figures compare to March Planting Intentions numbers.
The table below shows a breakdown of Outlook Forum corn and soybean acres vs. those from the March Planting Intentions report. I want to pay particular attention to the highlighted box, showing the difference between the Forum and March estimates. What this shows is a very clear tendency in recent years for the Forum acreage estimates to come in light relative to the March figures. What this is probably showing is the USDA’s belief that lower crop prices “should” lead to overall lower planted area, but of course that hasn’t been realized in recent years.
The bottom line here is that we shouldn’t be caught off-guard if the Forum’s total acreage figures don’t match up with some of the more optimistic private guesses we’ve seen lately. It is likely these figures will grow larger into March.
It does appear that Bloomberg has gone the extra mile and has conducted a survey of what to expect from the Outlook Forum figures. The average guess for corn acres is 90.8 and soybeans 88.3. The average guess on corn, soy, and wheat ending stocks are 2,072, 485, and 969, respectively.
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