July 20 — In June, the market was flooded with USDA reports. At mid-month, the supply and demand report was released and, at the end of the month, the acreage and stocks report was revealed. Nearby corn had a whopping $1.12 1/4 trade range in the month of June. The high of $4.50 was tested roughly three times, offering ample opportunity for the producer to make sales. However, the extreme bearish month-end acreage report sent corn futures plummeting 30 cents, the limit move.

The June 30th acreage report was very surprising as the USDA projected corn plantings at 87.035 million acres, up from 85 million acres in March and up 1.053 million acres from last year. This was a shock to the market because the new data figure was even greater than the top end of analysts' estimates. The end result was that corn and soybean total acreage was 3.5 million acres greater than first reported in June. Corn plantings increased in Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota, Illinois, Minnesota, Missouri and Ohio. Notably, North Dakota acres were decreased by 400,000 acres.

Quarterly corn stocks on June 1 totaled 4.27 billion bushels, up 6 percent from a year ago. This indicated that the March-May disappearance was 2.69 billion bushels versus 2.83 billion bushels a year ago.

The accompanying graph illustrates current corn values versus the past five years. With a big corn carry-out projected — 1.55 billion bushels and growing — the next marketing year will be an interesting one for corn price levels.