Yesterday we hosted our fifth webinar in our Grain Market Update Series which provides attendees with insight into the 2020 September WASDE report. In this webinar, Barchart's Head of Strategy, Keith Petersen and Market Expert Scott Shellady, popularly known as "The Cow Guy," previewed the upcoming September WASDE report, discussed the latest cmdty Yield Forecasts, and hosted a live Q&A. Don’t worry if you weren’t able to attend - we’ll fill you in now!

Scott began the conversation by pointing out that it has not been a great growing year and because of this, he believes the USDA numbers will be decreased a bit. There have been dry conditions and natural disasters throughout the country and he thinks that this will have an impact, although hybrid corn is becoming easier to grow and harder to be affected by weather as the years go on. He says if we get a bullish number, it will underpin where we’re at, even though the USDA does tend to throw curve balls from time to time. Scott and Keith then briefly touched on the 2020 presidential election and what the outcome will mean for exports.

Next, Keith took a deep dive into our cmdty Yield Forecasts for the September WASDE release. Our official September forecasts were released publicly on Tuesday September 2nd and are at 178.4 bu/ac for corn and 50.5 bu/ac for soybeans in the U.S., which are up from the August yield at 174.8 bu/ac for corn and 49.2 bu/ac for soybeans. We update our grain yield estimates daily and they can change, but as Keith informed the audience, since last week the estimates for both corn and soybeans have been consistent and remain the same.

Keith then introduced our new production forecasts for the audience. Alongside the Yield Forecasts we’ve been producing throughout the growing season, we are now forecasting Production and Acres Harvested for corn (left) and soybeans (right) in the U.S. This new data is already available to cmdtyView Pro users and we’ll be looking to expand coverage into other geographies in 2021.

Keith also informed the audience on a couple ways to access our yield forecast indexes. The first is through cmdty’s free U.S. Yield Forecast Report. This report is published on the first and third Tuesday of every month and compares our previous yield estimates with our newly released figures. This report covers both the national and state levels with updates from major crop production areas. Plus, starting next Tuesday, these reports will include production and acres harvested forecasts!

Daily estimates are available within our commodity trading platform, cmdtyView Pro. Through cmdtyView Pro subscribers can access a geospatial representation of our yield forecast indexes as well as access to county and crop reporting district forecasts at no additional cost!

After an in-depth overview on how to access and use our yield forecasts Keith facilitated a great Q&A revolving around Scott's extensive background. We can’t fit everything they covered in one blog post, so be sure to check out the full webinar here. Our next webinar in the livestream series will take place Thursday, Oct 8th at 2:00 PM CT. Make sure you’re registered for our entire market update series to be prepared for each WASDE and Crop Production release!