CHICAGO, Ill. — The overall message in three major farm commodities on Jan. 12 seemed to boil down to: There are more crops than expected.

For the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT), local market analysts examined the USDA’s 2011 annual Crop Production, as well as other reports the agency released that day. Terry Roggensack was surprised the USDA raised its national corn yield estimate for 2011 to 147.2 bushels per acre, an increase of 0.5 bushel from its November forecast.

The agency’s estimate there will be 48 million more bushels than previously expected – putting 2011 production at 12.4 billion – is based on this and a 45,000-acre increase in harvested area.

“The numbers look quite negative against trade expectations,” said Roggensack, founding principal for The Hightower Report, who thought last summer’s flooding issues with the Mississippi and Missouri rivers might have meant lower corn yields.

Feed and residual corn use didn’t change much, though USDA did raise its export estimates over last month by 50 million bushels. The market, he explained, was expecting a further 100 million-bushel drop in December 2011 ending stocks than the 846 million USDA reported, “and we just did not get anything close to that.” Despite this, stocks were down from December 2010 by 4 percent.

March and May corn futures responded to the reports by closing limit down, or 40 cents, per bushel Thursday afternoon in CBOT trading (and dropped 12 cents more Friday).

Dan Cekander of Newedge brokerage reported the day before that corn futures had stayed up mainly on the promise of bullish USDA reports. Without that, they might have gone down further Jan. 11, he said, on reports of greater-than-expected rainfall in Argentina and Brazil, which are in the middle of their summer.

Soybean ending stocks were also up in December, at 2.37 billion bushels, 4 percent over 2010. Jack Scoville, vice president of The Price Futures Group, said the USDA cut estimates for ending stocks worldwide because of “a downtick in production,” but increased U.S. ending stocks against market expectations; in fact, quarterly soybean stocks were 40 million more than expected. Estimated U.S. production for 2011 is 3.06 billion bushels, the sixth-largest on record.

Despite recent rains, Scoville said there is worry in South America for big corn losses, which could lead to double-cropping more soybeans on those acres next month. “There’s a lot of corn that is in pretty bad shape, there,” he said.

Old-crop soybean futures ended 19-20 cents down at the end of trading Thursday on the CBOT, and dropped by that and a little more Friday afternoon. Chris Robinson, senior trade analyst for Top Third Ag Marketing, noted that at one point on Jan. 12, soybeans had been down by 50 cents.

Roggensack said the USDA lowered corn production estimates in Argentina by 3 million tons; while the agency did not change its Brazil outlook, he said traders are anticipating a 12- to 16-ton potential loss there for the season.

U.S. wheat stocks in December were down 14 percent by USDA estimates, from one year prior, to 1.66 billion bushels. Jerry Gidel, grains analyst with North America Risk Management Services, Inc., said traders expected to see an increase in export estimates over last month, and the USDA did report a 25 million-bushel increase, though it lowered feed and food use by 20 million.

Gidel noticed a jump in wheat planting, or more than 1 million acres than expected; of this, about 600,000 acres were from soft red winter wheat grown in this part of the Midwest and Southeast. He said it was anticipated the Southeast might give over more acres to corn or cotton.

Total planting for U.S. winter wheat was more than 41.9 million acres, 3 percent over last year. He was surprised farmers planted more than expected, given that Australia and Europe had “very good” wheat crops last year.

Higher wheat plantings in the Southwest did not surprise Gidel, since he said those states need something to cover the ground to try to fight erosion from last year’s severe drought. Too, if all that wheat doesn’t mature, the farmers can at least claim the losses for crop insurance. “It’s a long ways before we get this U.S. crop here, in the bin,” he pointed out. July-December wheat futures dropped in CBOT trading Thursday by around 30 cents, but Friday’s dip was small, only 2-4 cents.

As always, weather dominated speculation for wheat maturation and corn and soybean planting this spring. Robinson said Friday morning that growers meeting in Hawaii (where American Farm Bureau’s annual meeting was last week) had reported intentions to plant 97.5 million acres of corn this year.

But Gidel said he’s been hearing that farmers may not even be able to buy enough seed corn to plant 94 million acres because of weather problems last year. Of the seeds to be planted, he said, there is concern over kernel quality as well.

Roggensack said corn ethanol margins have gone from “very profitable to negative” in 2012 so far. “We don’t have a blender’s credit this year,” he said of the Jan. 1 expiration of a longtime federal ethanol tax credit, “but we do have a mandate (from the federal government to produce a minimum amount of ethanol).”

If South American weather over the next 2-3 months plays into U.S. corn planting intentions for 2012, according to Roggensack, then Chinese demand for more protein for food and pork feed – along with South American production – may influence soybean planting here.