Corn prices in Omaha in the last half of March reached $4.50 per bushel, the high for the crop year that began last September. The low price for Omaha corn prices this crop year was last September at $3.90 per bushel. Prices have risen steadily as export prospects have improved with the decline in the US dollar in foreign currency markets and stable trading conditions with our best grain customers such as Mexico, Japan, and South Korea. Even Western Europe is taking considerably more corn than several years ago. According to USDA’s Office of the Chief Economist (OCE), corn exports should set a record this crop year at 3.3 billion bushels, up from 2.858 billion bushels last year and 2.255 billion bushels in the 2023/24 crop year.
Demand for corn from the domestic ethanol industry has also been holding steady during the last few years. Corn consumed for ethanol and its by-products are expected to be up to 5.6 billion bushels this crop year from 5.436 billion bushels in the 2024/25 crop year and from 5.489 billion bushels in 2023/2024.
The USDA-National Agriculture Statistics Service (NASS) reported in late March that inventories of corn on March 1 were record-large for March 1 at nine billion bushels. Inventories stored in elevators off-farm were slightly less than a year ago (-2%) and generally below the amount of corn stored in elevators off farms on March 1 in the years between 2017 and 2022. Corn inventories stored on farms this March 1 were unprecedentedly large at 5.4 billion bushels, 900 million more bushels than a year ago and topping the previous March 1 record set in 2019 at 5.2 billion bushels. Corn prices in the first week of April declined about $0.20 from their highs in late March…