By Ros Krasny and Julie Ingwersen
WASHINGTON Feb 21 (Reuters) – The United States is on track for record large soybean and corn crops in 2014-15, pushing ending stocks higher and prices sharply lower, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said on Friday.
Soybeans will be the real bin-buster in the coming season, based on projected record acreage and rising yields, the agency said at its annual Agricultural Outlook conference.
USDA forecast a soybean crop of 3.550 billion bushels, large enough for U.S. ending stocks to almost double in 2014-15, to 285 million bu.
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Not only will planting soybean acreage increase, but USDA said there would be less so-called prevented planting in the Northern Plains and the Midwest in 2014.
“With normal abandonment, harvested acreage is projected at 78.5 million acres, up 2.6 million from 2013,” USDA said. However, analysts had expected that seeded soybean area would be even higher and there has not been a sharp futures market reaction to the USDA forecasts.
With a huge total supply of 3.7 billion bu., it will be farewell to “beans in the teens,” USDA said. The season average farm price was pegged at $9.65 per bushel, down from $12.70 this year.
Corn plantings are forecast to fall for a second consecutive year, but with strong projected yields would still be high enough for the U.S. to eke out a record harvest of 13.985 billion bu., USDA said.
U.S. corn ending stocks were forecast at 2.111 billion bu., enough to knock the season average price down to $3.90 per bushel from $4.50 projected in 2013-14.
Several weeks before farmers will be in the fields to plant, USDA forecast strong corn yields of 165.3 bu. per acre and soybean yields of 45.2 bu. per acre.
USDA said yields should be higher than in 2013, when crops were hurt by delayed plantings and late-summer dryness.
Analysts think the yield numbers are ambitious.
“These numbers were a little bit bearish with the big yields (for corn and soybeans). The market is not reacting to it so the market does not believe it,” said Roy Huckabay, analyst with the Linn Group in Chicago.
USDA looked for 2014-15 wheat prices to fall sharply as well, to $5.30 per bu. from $6.80, even though the crop, projected at 2.16 billion bu., will be only marginally higher than this year’s harvest.
Among the wheat classes, hard red winter and durum production is expected to rise, offset by cuts in soft red winter, other spring, and winter white wheat.
Wheat ending stocks for the new year were estimated at 587 million bu., slightly above 558 million this year, as export demand slips.
