St. Louis, Missouri
April 9, 2008
A rise in the projected use of
corn for export and as livestock feed provides increased room
for optimism about corn acreage, the
National Corn Growers Association
(NCGA) said Wednesday.
“Many analysts expect growers to increase the number of acres
planted to corn, beyond the 86 million estimated last month by
the USDA,” said NCGA Chairman Ken McCauley. “We’re already
looking at the second-highest acreage in over 50 years and
market fundamentals are strongly signaling for growers to
consider planting more corn to meet increasing demand.”
McCauley, a grower from White
Cloud, Kan., said he also took another look at his planting
intentions and budgets following recent comments by Darrell
Good, a University of Illinois agricultural economics professor.
“The pendulum has swung decidedly in favor of corn at this
point,” Good said in an Associated Press story on April 7. For a
lot of the central and northern Illinois farms, he added, “corn
pencils out easily” to be more profitable than soybeans.
In its monthly World
Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates (WASDE), released
today, USDA projects increases in corn exports and use of the
grain for livestock feed while projecting a decrease in the use
of corn for ethanol. The report provides the following updated
figures for corn consumption:
Feed and Residual:
6,150 million bushels (up 200 million from March WASDE
report)
Ethanol: 3,100 million bushels (down 100
million from March)
Other Food, Seed and Industrial: 1,360
million bushels (up 5 million from March)
Total Domestic Use: 10,610 million bushels
Exports: 2,500 million bushels (up 50
million from March; a record high)
Total Use: 13,110 million bushels
Ending Stocks: 1,283 million (down 155
million from March)
The USDA also upgraded the
season average price for corn to a midpoint of $4.30 per
bushel. McCauley notes while this is an increase from the
previous projection, many farmers will receive far less than the
prices of $6 or more currently quoted in the main stream media
from the Chicago Board of Trade.
Click here to read the entire USDA WASDE Report
Click here for the Associated Press story on corn acreage |
