WASHINGTON, May 10 (Reuters) - A record U.S. corn crop this fall will end two years of nail-biting tight supplies, the government predicted on Thursday, while its forecasts for lower-than-expected global stocks of wheat and soybeans may keep food prices high.
The U.S. Agriculture Department's first estimates for this year's harvest and next year's demand showed that domestic corn stocks will surge from a near record low this year to a seven-year high by September 2013, aided by expected record yields this year as farmers sprinted to plant an early crop.
USDA had less bountiful outlooks for other supplies, with domestic soybean inventories seen falling to 145 million bushels for the 2012/13 year from 210 million this year, with a stocks-to-use ratio "at a historically low 4.4 percent."
The 145 million is slightly more than a two-week supply. Analysts had forecast 164 million bushels.
Futures prices soared 1.9 percent for new-crop soybeans, the largest gain in 5-1/2 weeks at the Chicago Board of Trade. New-crop corn, for delivery in December, fell by 1.4 percent to $5.09-3/4 a bushel, the lowest price since March 2011.
The report threatens to extend a cycle of volatile prices, with a shortage of one crop in one year giving way to a shortage of another in the next. Food prices spiked in 2008 and have remained high and volatile since then because of the razor-thin stocks and huge demand globally, especially from a hungry China.
Although soybean prices have led the complex this year, some analysts were still betting that corn -- the grain that's been in greatest deficit -- would set the longer-term tone.
"The upshot is that corn is the locomotive that pulls the grain train, and that engine is headed south," said Charlie Sernatinger, analyst with ABN AMRO.
