The USDA released its June WASDE (World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates) report on Friday.

Neil Townsend is Chief Market Analyst with FarmLink Marketing Solutions.

"We didn't expect much coming into this report. There's just so much unknown in terms of the growing season and all that kind of thing. We didn't expect them to cut corn or soybean yield or make adjustments to the acreage given the ongoing nature of the planting sequence particularly in North Dakota, a little bit South Dakota and Minnesota. That's generally what we got. I think one surprise was that they cut U.S. corn exports, which is maybe supported by the export inspections and the exports sales report but not necessarily supported by census, which is sort of the definitive guide to what happens."

Townsend says the census report suggests much higher corn exports than the USDA forecast for 2021/22 based mainly on something we know very well, that a lot of corn came into Canada and a significant amount of corn also went into Mexico to compensate for some drought down there as well.