Wheat Stocks Increased Nationally by 21 percent

Friday’s USDA Small Grains Production and Grain Stocks report held few surprises. All wheat production estimated 2.3 billion bushels, up 12 percent from last year. Winter wheat record yields countering the lowest planted acreage in almost 100 years making for a crop of 1.67 billion bushels up 22 percent. Spring wheat lowest planted acres in 44 years, bringing an 11 percent lower crop. All wheat stored in all positions on September 1, 2016 totaled 2.53 billion bushels, up 21 percent from a year ago. USDA Chief Economist Rob Johansson says
Johansson: “That’s a record and that is close to the upper level of the trade’s expectation so that will depending on how that market perceives that may push down a bit on prices but on the other hand that was a good amount of speculation that there were high levels of wheat stocks.”
On-farm wheat stocks are estimated at 726 million bushels, up 12 percent from last September. Off-farm stocks, at 1.80 billion bushels, are up 24 percent from a year ago.
When it comes to corn, Johansson says
Johansson: “We’re at 1.74 billion bushels in storage for corn. That’s up less than a half percent from last year. Still it is the highest since 2006 that we’ve seen. You know we had record production - so that implies that we had high use as well. We did see the highest June to August use on record. Corn stocks coming in right at about the middle of trade expectations so no surprises there.”