With excellent early yields, corn, soybean markets plunge.

Feedstuffs, September, 2004 by Gil Gullickson

Initial bumper yields and the resulting big crop talk continued to pummel corn and soybean futures last week.

"As we continue to harvest, yields continue to be excellent," said Don Roose, president of U.S. Commodities, West Des Moines, Iowa. "That was confirmed from the week's government crop ratings."

The U.S. Department of Agriculture pegged corn in good to excellent condition for the week ended Sept. 19 at 70%, 1% above the previous week and well above last year's 46% level at this time. USDA also ranked 64% of the soybean crop in good to excellent condition, 1% above than the previous week.

If this holds, the result could be a 3 billion-bushel soybean crop and an 11.1 billion-bushel corn crop, larger than USDA's Sept. 10 projection, Roose said....