The US Department of Agriculture presented the US corn market with no surprises in its World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates report March 9 by maintaining all supply-demand estimates for US corn for 2020-21 marketing year (September-August) at the same levels as seen in February.
The March WASDE report is typically not known for major changes, however, market participants this time were anticipating updates to US corn ending stock and export estimates for 2020-21.
The USDA maintained US corn ending stocks estimate for 2020-21 at 1.502 billion bushels as seen in February, while market participants expected the estimate to be lowered to 1.47 billion bushels.
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S&P Global Platts Analytics expected the USDA to raise its US corn export estimates for 2020-21 to 2.7 billion bushels in the March WASDE, which was maintained at 2.6 billion bushels.
The USDA upheld the US' total corn consumption estimate at 14.625 billion bushels and production estimate at 14.18 billion bushels, as seen earlier.
The estimates for US feed and residual use and corn used for ethanol were also left unchanged at 5.65 billion bushel, and 4.95 billion bushels, respectively.
The season-average corn price was maintained at $4.30/bushel for 2020-21.
The most active May futures contract of corn on the Chicago Board of Trade shed some gains following the WASDE report. The contract fell nearly 6 cents/bu following the release of the report and was trading at $5.4/bu.
On the global side, corn ending stocks projection was raised to 287.67 million mt for 2020-21, up 1.1 million mt from February forecast.
