The soyabean crop in the USA is expected to reach a record level this year, according to US Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) data reported by World Grain.
The USDA’s 12 August Crop Production and World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates (WASDE) for 2024 forecast US soyabean production at a record-high 4.589bn bushels, up 154M bushels, or 3.5%, from its July trend-line projection, and up 424M bushels, or 10%, from 2023.
Yield outlooks were also higher at 53.2 bushels/acre, up 5% from 50.6 bushels/acre last year and nearly a bushel above the average pre-report trade expectation of 52.5 bushels/acre.
“You can’t look at this any other way than a significantly bearish report,” Brian Harris, executive director and owner of Global Risk Management, was quoted as saying in the 22 August report.
The USDA forecast the carryover of soyabeans on 1 September 2024 at 560M bushels, up 29% from its July outlook of 435M bushels and up 62% from the current year’s carryover of 345M bushels. The USDA left unchanged nearly all 2024/25 US soyabean meal and soyabean oil projections.
Harris said such adjustments could be forthcoming after the start of the new crop soyabean crushing season in early October.
In addition to high yields, the record-large soyabean crop forecast was also the result of a sharp increase in planted and harvested area.
The USDA said 87.1M acres (35.24M ha) had been planted to soyabeans this year, up 4.2% from 83.6M acres (33.83M ha) in 2023, and the August acreage data was also 1M acres (40.46M ha) higher than the June acreage report.
The trade had expected reduced planted area due to severe flooding in June and July across major growing areas in the Upper Midwest.
It was likely the June acreage report did not include details of lost acreage as that data had been collected via surveys in early June prior to any flood damage from later that month, the report said.
“All that flooding in the Midwest should have taken the total down somewhere between 250,000 and 500,000 acres, but instead the planted area was up a million acres,” Harris said.
In the 12 August Crop Progress report, the USDA rated soyabeans in the 18 major growing states at 68% good-to-excellent, unchanged from the previous week’s report, well above 59% at the same time last year and 8% higher than the five-year average for the date. Iowa, the second-highest producing soyabean state, set a new season high with a rating of 77% good-to-excellent.
