The US corn crop may not be due for a downgrade on Wednesday as many investors are expecting, with losses to late harvesting already more than accounted for, a leading analyst has said.

Observers are on average expecting the US Department of Agriculture to cut its estimate of US corn production in 2009-10 by 70m bushels when it releases its latest monthly global crop supply and demand report, key events of the farm commodities calendar.

The USDA has, unusually, resurveyed corn farmers after wet weather left harvesting at its most delayed for at least a generation.

However, Don Roose, the president of broker US Commodities, said that the USDA revision will be upward, predicting a rise of 50m-75m bushels to the production figure.

Less from history 

"When the original survey was undertaken, when such a difficult harvest was going on, farmers would already have accounted for the difficulties in conditions," Mr Roose told Agrimoney.com.

His comments echo a long-held belief at Goldman Sachs which was noting as early as November the likelihood of the US corn crop defying expectations by beating previous official forecasts.

"In the seven instances since 1974 when corn harvest was less than 50% completed as of the last week of October, yields were revised down from the [USDA] October estimate in only three instances and the average revision was an increase of +1.8 bushels per acre," the investment bank said in a note in January.

Variety of estimates 

Uncertainty over the production revision, coupled with some expectation of a cut to US corn export hopes, have provoked a wide range of analysts' estimates of where the USDA will peg year-end stocks of the grain.

However, the Linn Group sees the figure rising by nearly 100m bushels to 1.81bn bushels.

Analysts are on average forecasting the report to show a small drop in the USDA estimate for soybean stocks at the end of 2009-10, with many viewing the briefing as largely irrelevant to wheat, for which there will be no fresh production estimates.

Nonetheless, Tim Hannagan at broker PFGBest warned that the report would likely have some impact on the wheat market, if only thanks to the trading strategies of investors using it as a hedge against corn or soybeans.