WASHINGTON, March 28 (Reuters) - U.S. growers would harvest
a record 14.6 billion bushels of corn and a record 3.4 billion bushels of
soybeans, Agriculture Department data indicated on Thursday, bumper crops that
would ease razor-tight supplies and likely deflate sky-high commodity prices.
Based on USDA's survey of farmers' planting intentions,
Reuters calculated the likely size of the three major U.S. field crops, using
USDA's projected yields and abandonment rates.
They are:
--a record 14.6 billion bushels of corn. Growers plan to
sow the largest corn area since 1936. With normal weather and yields, the crop
would end three years of declining U.S. corn production and exceed the record
13.092 billion bushels from 2009.
--a record 3.4 billion bushels of soybeans, harvested from
the fourth-largest plantings on record. It would exceed the 3.359 billion
bushels harvested in 2009 and, like corn, reverse a three-year decline in
output.
--a moderate 2.1 billion bushels of wheat. Plantings are up
a projected 1 percent from 2012 but persistent drought in the U.S. Plains will
reduce yields. The winter wheat crop was in poor shape from dry weather and was
damaged by freezing weather early this week in southeastern Kansas, the west
Oklahoma Panhandle, far northwest Texas and southeastern Colorado.
Corn stocks at the end of this marketing year on Aug. 31
are forecast to be smallest since 1996 and soybeans the smallest since 2004.
At its Outlook Forum in late February, USDA projected a
fall harvest of 14.530 billion bushels of corn, 3.405 billion bushels of
soybeans and 2.100 billion bushels of wheat.
USDA
projects yields of 163.6 bushels an acre for corn, 44.5 bushels an acre for
soybeans and 45.2 bushels an acres for wheat. It expects a wheat abandonment
rate of 17 percent, slightly above average; corn and soybean abandonment would
be average at 8 percent for corn and 1.2 percent for soybeans.
