The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) in its World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates (WASDE) report released last week raised projected corn exports by 25 million bushels due to the stronger pace of shipments in recent weeks.

Projected ending stocks of corn were lowered by an offsetting 25 million bushels. Analysts were expecting the USDA to raise corn ending stocks by 7 million bushels to 1.456 billion bushels.

"We have slowly been chewing away at old-crop corn stocks, which should be friendly to corn," said Randy Martinson executive vice president with Progressive Ag in Fargo, N.D. With South America’s corn production and ...