October corn for ethanol usage disappoints.

The monthly corn for ethanol report was a bearish surprise. USDA reported only 460 million bushels processed during October. This was minimally below last year, -0.4%. It was a bit of a surprise as the weekly ethanol production reports for October ran about +3% vs. last year. This may give us a light concern about this year's crop holding much larger efficiency, more ethanol produced from one bushel of corn, than last year. We'll get the first look at complete Q1 Sep - Nov efficiency rates on the next monthly report, January 2.

As it stands right now we have September corn usage at +4.4% year and now a surprisingly low October run at -0.4%. This two-month rate is +1.9% from last year. We are ahead of USDA's whole year goal of -0.5%. Allendale is currently +50 million bushels vs. USDA and will hold from adjusting that higher until the first week of January.

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