USDA Grain Stocks ‘Surprise’ With Larger Corn Inventories Than Expected

This morning the USDA released the September Grain Stocks report.

The USDA report pegged U.S. old-crop corn stocks as of Sept. 1, 2025, at 1.532 billion bushels, down 13% from a year ago but above the average trade expectation of 1.336 billion bushels.

For soybeans, the USDA reported old-crop stocks at 316 million bushels, down 8% from Sept. 1, 2024, and below the average trade expectation of 322 million bushels.

The USDA said U.S. wheat stocks as of Sept. 1, 2025, were at 2.12 billion bushels, above the average trade expectation of 2.041 billion bushels and up 6% from a year ago.

Additionally, at the top of the report, USDA included a “special note” indicating the agency adjusted the 2024 corn and soybean crops. Corn production was increased 25 million bushels and soybean production was increased 7.74 million bushels.

Small Grains Summary

The USDA also released the Small Grains 2025 Summary today. In this report, the agency pegged 2025 wheat production at 1.985 billion bushels. This was above the average trade expectation of 1.925 billion bushels and up less than 1% from 2024.

Trade Reaction

Al Kluis, managing director of Kluis Commodity Advisors, said the reports were bearish for corn and wheat and slightly bullish for soybeans, but not enough to pull soybean prices higher. He said immediately following the reports’ release all three commodities were in the red.

“The stocks report showed larger inventories of corn and wheat than what we thought,” he said. “In fact, the corn stocks number was above the high end of the trade estimate range. So, I’m not sure where all these bushels are coming from, but it certainly starts the year with much larger beginning stocks. The wheat number also came in over 2.1 billion bushels, about 80 million bushels more than expected. So we have piles and piles of grain around, there’s storage problems, and we have harvest coming at as hard.”

Kluis also said the note about increasing 2024 production was “unusual,” but that he had long suspected the soybean estimate was too low.

Naomi Blohm, senior market advisor at Total Farm Marketing, characterized the production adjustment to the 2024 corn crop in the Grain Stocks report as “surprising.”

“It might be a blessing for end users who now have one more chance to secure cheap corn, as the early harvest yield results for corn are coming in substantially lower than last year, due to disease,” she said. “The USDA will likely need to continue the yield cut on future WASDE [World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates] reports, and now have a cushion of supply as a comfortable backdrop, in order to be honest about the yield drop reality.”

Editor’s Note: Trade expectations are sourced from Dow Jones.