Chicago | Reuters – Chicago soybean and corn futures rose on Friday after the U.S. Department of Agriculture delivered a bearish, but unsurprising, monthly crop report.
U.S. farmers will harvest the most acres of corn since 1933 and produce more of the grain than previously expected, even though crop yields will miss earlier forecasts, the USDA said around midday on Friday.
The agency further increased its estimate for how many acres will be harvested in a monthly supply and demand report, after surprising grain traders with a large acreage increase in August.
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“We’re seeing green on the screen here now at midday, and that tells me the report didn’t provide anything that really emboldened the bears or scared the bulls,” Arlan Suderman, chief commodities economist at StoneX, said. “I interpret this as the market taking a big sigh of relief following this report.”
The most active soybean contract on the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) Sv1 settled 12-3/4 cents higher to $10.46-1/4 per bushel.
CBOT corn Cv1 settled 10-1/4 cents higher at $4.30 per bushel, while CBOT wheat Wv1 settled 2 cents higher to $5.23-1/2 a bushel on spillover support from corn futures.
The USDA raised its 2025 U.S. corn production estimate to a record 16.814 billion bushels from 16.742 billion a month earlier. For soybeans, the USDA projected the 2025 U.S. yield at 53.5 bushels per acre, down from 53.6 bpa a month earlier.
High levels of fungal disease in corn fields across the U.S. Midwest are threatening to reduce yields, growers and crop experts said.
A dearth of Chinese demand, due to a trade war with Washington, is also hanging over the soybean market, with U.S. farmers missing out on billions of dollars in soybean sales to China halfway through their prime marketing season.
Additional reporting by Gus Trompiz in Paris and Ella Cao and Lewis Jackson in Beijing.
