The grain markets reacted negatively Wednesday to the latest crop production reports released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The largest losses took place in the wheat market and the least amount of damaged occurred in soybeans. In reviewing the report, Tom Leffler of Leffler Commodities said the U.S. wheat ending stocks came in at 814 million bushels, that was an increase over 793 million bushels over last month’s projections.
"We saw the yield increase by seven tenths of a bushel per acre, putting the average yield in wheat at 44.2 bushels per acre," Leffler said. "That caused production to increase by 34 million bushels in all-wheat."
The nation’s wheat carryover increased by three million bushels. The feed and residual usage increased by 15 million bushels. Oklahoma's winter wheat production was lowered by a little over four million bushels over last month in lowering state average by one bushel per acre. Texas wheat production was lowered 11.25 million bushels in lowering the average state yield by three bushels per acre, while the projection for the Kansas wheat crop increased. Leffler said USDA increased the estimate for Kansas wheat production by 42 million bushels by increasing the state yield by five bushels per acre for total production of 314 million bushels.
"So, the wheat took the biggest hit today, going to be a lot of controversy about - is this really reflecting that much of a positive increase in Kansas or is there more problems with the additional rain than what they are NOT accounting for," Leffler said. "The next thing is, with the rain that’s in the forecast starting tomorrow that runs into next week, that’s not going to be good news for the wheat market, so we might have over done it a little bit today to the downside."