For once there wasn't any major surprise in the numbers. One could say the biggest surprise this morning was the lack of any surprise! The August report is the first field survey based estimate of the corn and bean crops so there often is a big surprise. The initial reaction of traders is for a slightly lower start in wheat and corn, steady to slightly better in beans.

Here are some additional numbers from the report that aren't in the tables: the bean crop estimate would make it the largest US bean crop ever while the corn number would make it the second largest ever. There was very little acreage switching between the corn and beans despite trade expectations of up to 1 million acres less corn and a similar increase in beans. The USDA raised their estimate of the amount of corn used to make ethanol in the 2009-10 crop year to 4.2 million bushels from 4.1 million bushels in July. In 2008-09, 3.65 million bushels were used. The amount of bean oil used to make bio diesel fuel was left unchanged from last month at 2 billion lbs. In the 2008-09 crop year, 1.700 billion lbs was used. Note the contrast between the USDA estimate of China's corn crop and the estimate of China's government think tank reported in my pre opening comment earlier this am, with the USDA 4 million tonnes lower than the Chinese estimate. There are smaller differences between the two in estimating the other crops as you can see from the numbers.

Another day, another US bean sale to China: the USDA reported the sale of 113,000 tonnes of US beans to China for the 2009-10 crop year, starting Sep 1. However, 58,000 tonnes had been previously reported sold to an unknown destination so only 55,000 tonnes of the sale is new business. ---Vic Lespinasse