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Expectations for Eastern Corn Belt production to boost supplies

A commodity broker says better-than-expected yields in the Eastern Corn Belt will likely show up in Friday’s USDA report.

Mark Talaski is with Advance Trading Inc.

“My suspicion is we’re going to find out that the stocks are heavily weighted Illinois and East because of the better crop,” he says.   “We’ve had pretty strong demand out West for corn and soybeans and the corn crop is definitely in the central to eastern half of the Corn Belt. We’ll probably end up seeing a very sizable carry-out.”

Talaski tells Brownfield he’s also watching USDA’s planted winter wheat acreage totals after the late harvest season.

“The crop is definitely smaller in the East,” he says. The USDA will give us their first stab at that on Friday. We’ll also get hard wheat in the West, and we’ll probably see acres increased out there because they had a very good fall and they had good adequate moisture, so they did plant more.”

He says short of a Black Swan event or major weather issue, prices will likely deteriorate heading into the spring because of large stocks.

Brownfield interviewed Talaski during this week’s Michigan Agri-Business Association Winter Conference.