MANHATTAN, Kan. – Exports are lagging, prices are low and spring planting is off to a slow start, but not all is doom and gloom in the corn market.

Prospects for feed usage in 2001-2002 look fairly good and that, coupled with possibilities of weather interference in spring planting, could be enough to lift Chicago Board of Trade 2001 July corn futures from their current slump, said Kansas State University economist Bill Tierney.

"The July corn futures contract seems caught in a down trend," said Tierney, who is a crops marketing specialist with K-State Research and Extension. "Given the expectation of continued high levels of feed usage in 2001-2002 and the ever-present possibility of problems planting the 2001 crop, it seems likely that the July futures contract could reverse direction and trade higher over the next 45 to 60 days."

The July contract could climb to $2.55 to $2.60 per bushel if corn plantings are delayed much by the weather, he said.

On April 11, CBOT July corn futures settled at $2.19 a bushel.

The USDA’s March stocks figure at 1,941 million bushels, when taken as a percent of usage, was slightly larger than last year, Tierney explained. As a consequence, the USDA, in its April supply and demand report, raised its projection for domestic feeding of corn by 50 million bushels. The projection now stands at a record 5,825 million bushels.

Using the USDA’s annual projection for feed and residual use and subtracting the F&R that occurred in the first half of the [corn marketing] year, leaves a remainder of 2 billion bushels to be fed in the last six months of the year.

"That would also mean that about 34 percent of total annual corn feed and residual use will take place in the last half of the marketing year. That is in line with the average for the last five years," Tierney said.

U.S. corn plantings as of April 8 were 2 percent complete, slightly behind the five-year average of 4 percent as of that date, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Wet fields and low soil temperatures has impeded seeding in some areas.

"Considering that the projected March stocks-to-September-through-February use situation is relatively low, it is difficult to fundamentally justify sharply lower ‘old crop’ corn prices," Tierney said. "At least, not until we know how many acres will be planted, under what conditions, and what yields are likely to be."

The USDA recently estimated that U.S. corn growers would plant 76.7 million acres to corn in 2001, down 4 percent from 2000 and down 1 percent from 1999. Expected acreage is down in almost all areas of the United States.