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Crop Report: USA spring wheat production up over 50%, record high for soybeans
- WaitWaitWha 4y ago>Corn Production Down 5 Percent from 2021 >Soybean Production Up 2 Percent from 2021 >Cotton Production Down 28 Percent from 2021 >Winter Wheat Production Down Less Than 1 Percent from July Forecast This is directly from the first paragraph of the release referenced.
- ars 4y ago> Other spring wheat: Production is forecast at 512 million bushels, up 2 percent from the previous forecast and up 55 percent from 2021. Spring what is different from Winter wheat.
- SaintGhurka 4y agoWould you say that title sort of buries the lede, then? We gained 180 million bushels of spring wheat, but dropped 750 million bushels of corn.
- TheRealPomax 4y agoNot really? They're different things, for wildly different markets. The vast majority (as in, around 90%) of corn is not for human consumption but is used for farm feed and ethanol production.
- s1artibartfast 4y agoPeople care much more about meat price at the market than how much an ear costs
- buscoquadnary 4y agoYa but you have to remember most of the corn produced in the US is inedible for humans, with much of it being feed corn and the abomination that is Ethonal fuel. Actual food corn I'm willing to bet is unlikely to face any real impact.
- s1artibartfast 4y ago"actual food corn" is basically irrelevant. The reason we care about corn at all is its use as feed corn and chemical processes
- thematrixturtle 4y ago"We" in the US perhaps, but (say) Mexico might disagree.
- bluGill 4y agoA lot of corn acres are facing severe drought this year, and so yields are down. Last year it was wheat facing drought and thus low yields. Look at acres planted if you want to know what farmers expected in spring. Look at 5 year averages if you want to compare the yields with something.
- Kon-Peki 4y agoWinter wheat was planted last fall and should be close to fully harvested by now. Spring wheat was planted after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and will be harvested starting shortly. That is really what is notable here - American farmers have done this in response to geopolitical events. As for corn, the forecast has been pretty terrible given drought, heat and fertilizer shortages. All in all, I'd say that farm output in the US is far better than was predicted earlier this year.
- dirtyid 4y agoI like the nicely formated txt file, but why is it in a txt file? Could use a nice warez .nfo header... wonder if there's an official gov ASCII file header.
- chaps 4y agoI'd be willing to bet it's because some trader's tooling written 20 years ago broke after a format change so they successfully raised hell to make sure it would stay the same format forever. Probably perl.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- cagenut 4y agoprobably long pre-dates perl, like RPG or CICS
- mulmen 4y agoAccording to the archive [1] this is a similar format to the (printed? faxed?) reports as far back as 1964. The annual version [2] goes back to 1941 and uses a similar format. Talk about backwards compatibility! [1]: https://usda.library.cornell.edu/concern/publications/tm70mv177?locale=en&page=71#release-items https://usda.library.cornell.edu/concern/publications/tm70mv... [2]: https://usda.library.cornell.edu/concern/publications/k3569432s?locale=en&page=9#release-items https://usda.library.cornell.edu/concern/publications/k35694...
- h2odragon 4y agoI wrote parsers for some of this data pre-1990 in GWBASIC. Replacing COBOL code that did the same.
- mulmen 4y agoIt's available in Text, PDF, CSV, and JSON at https://www.nass.usda.gov/Publications/ https://www.nass.usda.gov/Publications/.
- jerkstate 4y agoIt looks like an increase from 330 million bushels "other spring wheat" in 2021 to 511 million bushels in 2022. This is out of a total of 1.65 billion bushels in 2021 and 1.78 billion bushels in 2022. for comparison, Ukraine exports about 900 million bushels per year and Russia exports about 1.5 billion bushels per year.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- bryanlarsen 4y agoWheat prices were up because of the Ukraine war so farmers planted more wheat and less corn. But wheat prices have already returned to pre-war levels, and this report will depress them even further. OTOH, fertilizer prices at the time of planting were crazy high. Expenses up, revenue down. Farmers are going to be in a world of hurt this year.
- throwawaymaths 4y agoIs it not the case that wheat requires less chemical inputs than competing crops like corn? I would have expected farmers to see what was happening in Ukraine early on and nope out of input-heavy crops?
- bluGill 4y agoYou get a lot less yield though. There are very few farmers who would make more switching from corn to wheat if corn is an option. Farmers grow wheat where corn isn't an option for some climate reason. Sure your inputs are less for wheat, but a good corn farmer will still make a lot more money on corn than wheat in most cases.
- cwal37 4y agoThat’s why you hedge though. Quite a lot of exposure should already be handled well before we get to this point in the season. Ag commodities can be brutal and few people know that more personally than farmers.
- tick_tock_tick 4y agoI think a lot of people have zero idea that farmers sell futures when prices are high to lock in the value of their goods.
- thfuran 4y agoBut not American onion farmers.
- MonkeyMalarky 4y agoIt's because of the war right? Farmers looked at the price of wheat futures and chose to plant wheat over crops like corn?
- tekno45 4y agoI had no idea wheat grew in 4ish months. Definitely thought responding to this war was gonna be a nightmare for farmers.
- bluGill 4y agoMost of it is because last year the major wheat areas were in a severe drought and had a bad harvest. Farmers did plant a bit more wheat because of the war, but not near enough to explain the increase
- TheRealPomax 4y agoSoybeans, or Monsanto soy? Because just because Bayer bought Monsanto doesn't mean they stopped their underhanded ways to force farmers to either buy into Monsanto, or not grow soy at all.
- yosito 4y agoIf wheat production is up due to over planting, and that drives the price down, is that actually going to end up hurting Ukraine because now they can't export their wheat at the same price as before?
- jesuscript 4y agoUkraine exports mostly to the Middle East and other nearby Asian/African countries. I don’t know if the US has plans to divert our wheat to those places. The optics of the war seem a little staged. Gas prices down, wheat exports … up? It almost makes sense for Russia to dig in and prolong the war beyond a year to show that such optics are not sustainable by the US. Strategically, if I were Russia, I wouldn’t even consider a ceasefire until winter passes and Europe gets hit with heating costs, just to make my point. It’s the only point of leverage left.
- fuoqi 4y ago>Ukraine exports mostly to the Middle East and other nearby Asian/African countries. In normal times. But now most of Ukrainian wheat exported by sea and probably almost all exported by ground gets hoarded by Europe without getting to the most vulnerable African countries.
- labster 4y agoOr Europe will import less grain by sea and boats from the US will go to other ports. Fuel is being stockpiled by Europe, but not other commodities right now.
- merry_flame 4y agoGood times for said countries to start weaning themselves off imported cereals and go back to their own traditional crops. I can understand how Egypt got into the mess of being so dependent on cheap foreign wheat, but Nigeria and Indonesia?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- cwal37 4y agoStrong recommendation for Mastering Grain Markets[0] if the discussion in this thread around why spring wheat is up interests you. Global ag commodities like this are keyed off of so many events, it’s really interesting to dive into the history and mechanisms that exist in the space to deal with volatility. I read this book when interviewing with a geospatial intelligence company in this space and I learned way more than I expected (having some previous mix of academic training in the Midwest that frequently touched on ag). Also the podcast Escaping 1980[1] if you want an example of a global event that drastically altered US ag production, leading to a decline/crisis that plenty of farmers still have as a pivotal event in their memory. [0] https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/15891377-mastering-the-grain-markets https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/15891377-mastering-th... [1] https://aei.ag/escaping1980/ https://aei.ag/escaping1980/ (not that AEI)
- jmoak3 4y agoThank you for the recommendation, adding it to my list. Meta, but my favorite part of HN is the exposure to books I'd never come across otherwise.
- jedberg 4y agoBut what about Frozen Concentrated Orange Juice?
- downvotetruth 4y agoHave trended up since the April thaw on ICE: https://www.theice.com/products/30/FCOJ-A-Futures/data?marketId=6170651&span=3 https://www.theice.com/products/30/FCOJ-A-Futures/data?marke...
- jedberg 4y agoI love that this exists.
- bluGill 4y agoI'm amused that there is so much Ukraine talk, and no weather talk. Last year harvest was way below normal because if drought, so of course this year harvest is way up. War is a factor, but weather is bigger
- vegetablepotpie 4y ago2021 saw Idaho's wheat crop production drop 32%, mostly because of drought and heat [1]. [1] https://www.postregister.com/farmandranch/crops/grain/idaho-wheat-production-fell-32-percent-this-year/article_92b302bb-b893-5d48-92d7-0a1729d50a1f.html https://www.postregister.com/farmandranch/crops/grain/idaho-....
- buscoquadnary 4y agoLive here know several potato farmers. They're worried about the snowfall last year, mostly that which didn't fall, and although we've been getting more rain their still nervous. Our big mighty tech utopia metropolis sometimes seem a lot like the tower of Babel where we've convinced ourselves we've beaten and overcome nature and we are masters of the environment. Well God comes along and gives us a dry year or two and suddenly we start remembering how completely out of our control most of our existence is. If you're the religious sort praying for some rain for the potato farmers in ID be mighty appreciated.
- stjohnswarts 4y agoyeah I much prefer having both numbers "% over running average over _ years" and "% over last year" both are important and most likely available to whomever is writing the article, but we get a clickbait title :)
- wbc 4y agoYeah but how's gourd production doing?
- systemvoltage 4y ago"Wheat, the new sexy" by Zeihan: https://youtu.be/Wi_nFz1CJSI?t=2115 https://youtu.be/Wi_nFz1CJSI?t=2115 This was a pretty entertaining presentation.
- tomohawk 4y ago> All wheat production for grain is forecast at 1.78 billion bushels, up less than 1 percent from the previous forecast and up 8 percent from 2021. How is that up 50%?
- stjohnswarts 4y agoI'm more impressed this is distributed as good old text :)
- hulitu 4y ago"The president made a work visit to a wheat field to congratulate the farmers. Pictures of the best Farmers appered on the front page of Washington Post". /s Some things never die.