The Corn Economy

Feb 24, 2023

Key Issues: TradeProductionResearch

Author: Krista Swanson

The United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) annual Agricultural Outlook Forum began yesterday with a 2023 Agricultural Economic & Foreign Trade Outlook by Chief Economist Seth Meyer. The USDA coincidingly released the 2023 Grains and Oilseeds Outlook. This provides a near-term update to the USDA Long-Term Projections Report. The report was released earlier this month but used a baseline set in October 2022. Highlights from the USDA Ag Outlook Forum for corn center on new forecasts for acreage, yield and production, price and use.   Acreage Projections for 2023: USDA provided an update to planted acres for major commodity crops. Although the economic-based approach for these estimates differs from the farmer-based survey responses used for the upcoming March 31st Planting Intentions Report, it provides insight into what we may expect. Corn is projected on 91.0 million acres. This is a reduction from the October 2022 baseline projection of 92.0 million acres, but up 2.4...

Feb 10, 2023

Key Issues: EthanolHigh-Octane Low-CarbonProductionResearch

Author: Krista Swanson

Projected corn ethanol use for the 2022/23 marketing year declined by 25 million bushels from last month, according to this week’s UDSA World Agriculture Supply & Demand Estimates report. As the only change on the supply or demand side of the corn balance sheet, it resulted in a corresponding increase of 25 million bushels in projected corn ending stocks for the current marketing year.   Despite a return to the post-COVID normal in 2022, fuel ethanol produced using corn trailed the years leading up to the 2020 COVID disruptions. From 2017 to 2019, the average annual fuel ethanol production was 15.9 billion gallons, calculated using data from the U.S Energy Information Administration (EIA). After dropping to 13.9 billion gallons in 2020 and recovering to 15.0 billion gallons in 2021, production in 2022 was 15.4 billion gallons. This is 88% of the 17.4 billion gallon per year total of U.S. ethanol production capacity.   The EIA Short-Term Energy Outlook, released earlier this week,...