USDA released their May 2018 World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates (WASDE) report Thursday.  The featured highlight of the May report is the first look at the 2018/19 crop corn and soybean balance sheets.

The 2017/18 US corn balance sheet was unchanged at 2.182 billion bushels ending stocks.  Soybean ending stocks were trimmed to 530 million bushels ending stocks as a result of an increase in crush by 20 million bushels.

The 2018/19 crop year balance sheets were created by plugging in the acres from the March Prospective Plantings report and using trendline yields.  The smaller acreage and yields result in tighter US ending stocks.  Corn ending stocks are projected at 1.682 billion bushels and soybean ending stocks are projected at 415 million bushels.

World numbers are also very important as problems with South American production have changed world fundamentals dramatically since  January.

Highlights from this report include Brazilian corn production being reduced from 92.0 MMT down to 87.0 MMT while Argentina corn production was unchanged at 33.0 MMT.

Brazilian soybean production was increased from 115.0 MMT up to 117.0 MMT which is a new record high while Argentina soybean production was reduced from 40.0 MMT down to 39.0 MMT.

World corn and soybean ending stocks continue to tighten which will put more emphasis on US production this summer.  World corn ending stocks are projected to end this year at 194.9 MMT falling down to 159.2 MMT next year.  A large part of this reduction comes from expectations that China will continue to reduce corn inventories.  World soybean ending stocks are projected to finish this year at 92.2 MMT and decline to 86.7 MMT next year.

Read the complete USDA May WASDE report here

Graphics courtesy of Advance Trading, Inc