Big crops, high dollar mean tough year for grain growers

Another year of bumper crops and high inventories are likely to spell another year of lower prices for corn, soybean and wheat growers, and alternately keep some feed costs in check for livestock producers.  Ag economists at Purdue University’s Center for Commercial Agriculture laid out what grain growers are facing in a crop outlook webinar on Sept. 13 based on USDA’s latest crop estimates and world supply and demand report.  The wheat crop is expected to bring record yields of 52.6 per acre, although lower acreage won’t bring record production. But at 2.3 billion bushels, it’s the largest crop since 2003, according to USDA. Inventories are also an issue, with decade-high inventories of corn and soybeans and the highest inventory of wheat since 2009 by the end of the marketing year.  Approximately 50 percent of a full year’s use of wheat at the end of next May will be leftover when harvest begins on next year’s crop in June and July, he said.