CHICAGO/WASHINGTON, May 24 (Reuters) – The U.S. Department of Agriculture is considering pushing back the release time for its market-sensitive crop reports to mid- or late-morning, during the height of Chicago trade to possibly minimize market volatility, according to an industry official who met with the agency on Thursday.

As the USDA considers whether to adjust its reporting schedule after the CME launched nearly round-the-clock trade this week, USDA Chief Economist Joe Glauber told representatives of major U.S. agricultural trade groups on Thursday that the agency would soon open a 30-day comment period to seek public opinion on such an adjustment.

After the CME announced its plan to move to a continuous 21-hour trading day earlier this month, some traders and farmers feared the exchange may be stoking volatility and favoring computer-driven traders by keeping markets open when the USDA issues many of its key reports at 7:30 a.m. Central (1330 GMT). Until this week, CME’s electronic trading was shut from 7:15 a.m. until floor trade begins at 9:30 a.m.

But that view may now be shifting, with some dealers now angling for a mid-morning release that would coincide with the current open-outcry trading session — a period when liquidity is at its peak, potentially helping dampen volatility. Trading volume in the early morning has been negligible this week.

“The impression was they were very amenable to moving it back to mid- to late-morning,” said one attendee, who declined to be named because the meeting was not public, about the USDA.

The USDA declined to comment on specifics of the meeting.

The meeting, with groups including the American Farm Bureau Federation, National Corn Growers Association and Commodity Markets Council, addressed the time of day that crop production, planting and supply/demand reports should be released.

WASHINGTON, May 10 (Reuters) – A record U.S. corn crop this fall will end two years of nail-biting tight supplies, the government predicted on Thursday, while its forecasts for lower-than-expected global stocks of wheat and soybeans may keep food prices high.

The U.S. Agriculture Department’s first estimates for this year’s harvest and next year’s demand showed that domestic corn stocks will surge from a near record low this year to a seven-year high by September 2013, aided by expected record yields this year as farmers sprinted to plant an early crop.

USDA had less bountiful outlooks for other supplies, with domestic soybean inventories seen falling to 145 million bushels for the 2012/13 year from 210 million this year, with a stocks-to-use ratio “at a historically low 4.4 percent.”

The 145 million is slightly more than a two-week supply. Analysts had forecast 164 million bushels.

Futures prices soared 1.9 percent for new-crop soybeans, the largest gain in 5-1/2 weeks at the Chicago Board of Trade. New-crop corn, for delivery in December, fell by 1.4 percent to $5.09-3/4 a bushel, the lowest price since March 2011.

The report threatens to extend a cycle of volatile prices, with a shortage of one crop in one year giving way to a shortage of another in the next. Food prices spiked in 2008 and have remained high and volatile since then because of the razor-thin stocks and huge demand globally, especially from a hungry China.

Although soybean prices have led the complex this year, some analysts were still betting that corn — the grain that’s been in greatest deficit — would set the longer-term tone.

WASHINGTON/CHICAGO, May 10 (Reuters) – Global stockpiles of corn and soybeans are set to rise next autumn after years of thinning inventories, the U.S. Agriculture Department was expected to say on Thursday, offering hope for a break in the cycle of surging food prices.

A breakneck start on planting the U.S. corn crop and timely rains in the drought-hit wheat fields of the southern Plains may encourage the USDA to estimate higher-than-average yields, analysts said ahead of the first USDA report to project crops and ending stockpiles for the 2012/13 crop year.

And while this year’s outlook for soybeans is likely to be cut for a fifth month in a row due to drought in South America, analysts expect stockpiles to rebound to 59.3 million tonnes next year, the highest in two years. The current run of high market prices is likely to encourage farmers to grow a bigger crop in the coming year.

U.S. farm exports may drop slightly because of larger world production, said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack in New York. “But there is still a robust interest in American agriculture products.”

USDA’s crop projections, with the growing season barely under way, are based on a March survey of U.S. growers’ planting intentions and assume normal weather and yields. There is great possibility for change. USDA gives a 16 percent margin of error to its U.S. soybean crop projection and a 26 percent margin for corn.

Although many analysts consider the era of cheap food to be over as appetites grow in powerhouses like China and India even as arable land remain largely stagnant, the huge crops could help tame a three-year cycle of high and volatile food costs.

Persistently low inventories have exacerbated a series of supply shocks that have roiled grain markets over the past two years, from the drought that devastated Russia’s 2010 wheat crop to China’s run on U.S. corn supplies last year.

WASHINGTON, April 26 (Reuters) – U.S. farmers will get a new crop-subsidy program that protects them from ruinous declines in revenue, the biggest threat to survival with today’s high and volatile prices, a Senate committee decided on Th ursday.

The Agriculture Committee approved the new path for the U.S. farm program by a 16-5 vote. The package would erase almost all traditional farm supports, especially the $5 billion a year “direct payment” subsidy paid regardless of cost, and save $23 billion over 10 years.

Instead, an insurance-like program would compensate grain and soybean growers when revenue from a crop was 11-21 percent below the five-year average with a maximum payment of $50,000. The federally subsidized crop insurance system would cover deeper losses. Cotton growers would use a separate, but similar, program.

“The era of direct payments is over,” said Agriculture chairwoman Debbie Stabenow of Michigan. “We are moving to risk management with additional support to farmers who need it.”

Added Pat Roberts of Kansas, the Republican leader on the committee: “This is truly a reform bill.” The five-year farm bill would cost around $480 billion, with public nutrition programs accounting for three-fourths of the spending.

Stabenow said the bill could be called for Senate debate in a few weeks and she aimed for enacting a new farm law before the current one expires on Sept. 30.

The House of Representatives wants much bigger cuts — $180 billion. Analysts say budget and election-year pressures may delay the new law until a post-election session or even 2013.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The discovery this week of the fourth U.S. case of mad cow disease was one of two things for food safety experts: a validation of a decade-long focused surveillance regime or a lucky break that highlights the need to revisit previously scrapped efforts for more comprehensive surveillance.

For now, calls for greater monitoring seem likely to go unheard, both because the “atypical” case appeared to be a one-in-a-million genetic mutation that officials said posed no threat to the food supply, and because of tightening budgets.

Funding for cattle health programs in the proposed 2013 budget is set to fall by 20 percent compared to two years earlier.

Discovery of the infected dairy cow at a rendering plant in central California may stoke an intensifying debate over food safety in the United States, already a major topic after the “pink slime” furor this spring, fungicide-tainted orange juice from Brazil and never-ending efforts to control disease in food caused by salmonella and e Coli bacteria.

While major importers from Japan to Canada pledged to maintain beef shipments and U.S. officials stressed that the “atypical” case had occurred in the cow spontaneously and was not in others animals, critics were quick to respond.

“Yesterday’s announcement of the fourth case of BSE, or mad cow disease, in the United States clearly highlights the need for a comprehensive national animal identification system,” said Representative Rosa DeLauro, a senior Democrat on the House Appropriations subcommittee that oversees the USDA and a frequent critic of its handling of livestock issues.

“We were lucky to identify this case.”

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Drought in major soybean producers Brazil and Argentina cut their production more deeply than expected, the U.S. government said Tuesday in a report that drove prices to near their highest since 2008.

While a more than 20 percent rally in soybean prices this year has reignited concerns over food prices, the outlook for corn supplies appeared upbeat after the Agriculture Department said end-season stockpiles would be higher than traders estimated as ranchers use more wheat in livestock rations.

In its regular review of global fundamentals, USDA cut its forecast of the crop in the South American giants for the fourth month in a row. It lowered the Brazil crop by 3.6 percent from March’s estimate and Argentina’s by 3 percent.

Since December, USDA has cut its projection of Brazil’s crop by 12 percent, and Argentina’s by 13 percent.

Chicago Board of Trade soybean futures gained 0.6 percent to $14.39 per bushel, within 20 cents of their 2011 peak. Corn futures, which drove most of last year’s early surge in food prices, dipped 0.3 percent, while wheat was unchanged.

“…Warm temperatures and a lack of rainfall since late February in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul further reduced yield and production prospects,” said USDA. “Argentina and Paraguay soybean production estimate also are further reduced this month, reflecting the damaging effects of this year’s drought.”

Brazil likewise issued a forecast on Tuesday, estimating the crop at 65.6 million metric tonnes (72.31 million tons), down 3.2 million tonnes from its March forecast. The Agriculture Ministry estimated exports at 31.2 million tonnes, down from 32.4 million tonnes in 2010/11. Brazil is the world’s largest soybean exporter.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A U.S. Navy F/A-18D fighter crashed soon after take-off into an apartment complex in Virginia on Friday, sending fireballs into the sky, heavily damaging half-a-dozen buildings and injuring nine people.

All the injuries, including those to the F/A-18 crew, were minor, officials said, but the search of the Mayfair Mews apartment complex was not complete. Both crew members ejected from the aircraft before it crashed into the buildings in Virginia Beach, and one pilot was rescued while still strapped into his ejection seat.

Initial indications were the F/A-18D “suffered a catastrophic mechanical malfunction” during a training flight, Navy Captain Mark Weisgerber said.

Thick black clouds of smoke billowed into the air as fire reduced the apartment buildings to a blackened shell. The Mayfair Mews complex was less than two miles (3.2 km) from Naval Air Station Oceana, where the F-18D was based.

“I feel very blessed that we didn’t find anyone (dead) in the first two buildings,” said Mayor William Sessoms on CNN. “I don’t know what to expect in the other buildings until they get into them.”

A volunteer rescuer, Pat Kavanaugh, told CNN he found one of the pilots in the wreckage, still strapped to his ejection seat with a parachute. Kavanaugh and neighbors picked up the seat and carried the pilot away from the flames.

Kavanaugh said the pilot “apologized very much for hitting our complex.”

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A U.S. Navy F-18D fighter crashed soon after take-off into an apartment complex in Virginia on Friday, sending fireballs into the sky, heavily damaging five buildings and injuring six people.

Four of the injured were people on the ground, including a firefighter. Both crew members ejected from the aircraft before it crashed into the buildings in Virginia Beach. They had minor injuries and were sent to hospital, the Pentagon said.

Thick black clouds of smoke billowed into the air as the apartment complex was reduced to a blackened shell.

Five buildings were heavily damaged by fire, Battalion Chief Tim Riley of the Virginia Beach Fire Department told CNN.

Rescuers were searching the damaged buildings at the Mayfair Mews apartments, less than two miles from Naval Air Station Oceana, where the F-18D was based.

“We have not had any reported missing people,” Riley said.

A volunteer rescuer, Pat Kavanaugh, told CNN he found one of the pilots in the wreckage, still strapped to his ejection seat with a parachute. Kavanaugh and neighbors picked up the seat and carried the pilot away from the flames.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. farmers will expand their corn plantings by 4 percent this spring to the largest in 75 years, topping expectations due to surprise reductions in soybeans and spring wheat, according to a government survey on Friday.

Soybean prices jumped to hit their highest in six months, extending this year’s rally after the Department of Agriculture said farmers would plant 1 percent less of the crop. Analysts had expected a rise in soy acres.

Nearby corn prices also climbed after separate data showed stockpiles fell 8 percent from a year ago, a bigger decline than analysts had expected.

The two pivotal planting and supply reports are likely to further shift concerns about global food supplies from corn to soybeans. The big corn crop means that grain is now expected to rebuild razor-thin inventories next year. Soybeans, a key source of livestock feed, are up 16 percent this year on fears that South American crops may be damaged by drought.

Overall acreage of the eight major field crops will rise 1.7 percent to the highest since 1998, according to the USDA’s annual Planting Intentions surveys of farmers. But with arable land now running short, the market is focused more than ever on the acreage devoted to each of the country’s key crops.

“The surveys overwhelmingly showed the idea we are going to get a lot more corn acres in,” said Mike Zuzolo, president of Global Commodity Analytics & Consulting.

U.S. farmers will boost corn planting to 95.9 million acres, the most since 1937 and above analyst expectations for 94.72 million acres. Record amounts are expected to be sown in Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota and Idaho.

WASHINGTON, March 30 (Reuters) – U.S. farmers will plant the most corn in 75 years to cash in on higher prices, topping expectations due to surprise reductions in soybean and spring wheat sowings, according to a U.S government report on Friday.

The dramatic expansion raised hopes that the next harvest would ease razor-tight supplies that have kept corn prices near historic highs.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture, in a separate report, said supplies in storage as of March 1 were smaller than expected.

“Going forward, it’s going to be all about the planting weather,” said Don Roose, president of U.S. Commodities.

In the annual prospective plantings survey, farmers were aiming to plant record amounts of corn in Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota and Idaho.

Nationally, the plantings outlook was up 4 percent from last year and above analyst expectations for 94.72 million acres.

Soybean plantings were projected to fall 1 percent from last year to 73.9 million acres, increasing concerns about tightening global supplies of the oilseed due to poor harvests in South America. Analysts had expected soy plantings to increase to 75.393 million acres.