The Brazilian soybean harvest wrapped up for the year, and we are now seeing the trade focus on the safrinha corn harvest. This is Brazil’s second corn crop and provides nearly all of the country’s exportable corn.

Several changes were made to domestic corn balance sheets in the August WASDE report, but all were within trade expectations.

U.S. corn yield was trimmed 2.4 bushels per acre for an average of 175.1 bushels. This put total production at 15.11 billion bushels, down 209 million bushels from July.

On the demand side, 2022-23 usage was reduced 45 million bushels due to lower exports and industrial use. Corn imports were also bumped up 10 million bushels. This raised old crop ending stocks 55 million bushels to 1.457 billion bushels.

Demand for the 2023-24 corn crop was cut 95 million bushels between exports, feed and residual, and industrial...