WASHINGTON (AP) – September showers came too late for cornfields in the Midwest, lowering the nationwide forecast a bit and also raising prices.

Still, last month’s rains were timely for the soybean crop, now on track for a record harvest, the Agriculture Department said Thursday. The monthly crop report had good news, too, for wheat growers, who are seeing the best prices in a decade.

Early harvest results for corn showed that the hot, dry summer curtailed yields more than expected across the central Corn Belt, the department said. Analysts reduced the corn forecast by 2 percent, to 10.9 billion bushels. The biggest reductions were in Illinois, Nebraska and Ohio.

“Accordingly, we’re projecting prices a little bit higher because of that,” said Joe Glauber, the department’s deputy chief economist.

Corn prices should range from $2.40 to $2.80 a bushel, an increase of 25 cents over last month’s estimate.

Vigorous demand from foreign customers and from U.S. ethanol plants have helped drive prices higher and are expected to cut corn surpluses by half, the department said.

The soybean crop is forecast at 3.19 billion bushels, which would be the highest production on record. Projections rose 3 percent from last month’s forecast and 4 percent from last year’s crop.

There was no change in the soybean price estimate of $4.90 to $5.90.

The Bush administration has been holding off on further aid for producers suffering through withering drought to see how this year’s harvest of corn and soybeans, the two major crops, turn out.

Meantime, wheat growers whose crop yields dropped because of extreme rain shortfalls saw price forecasts rise 15 cents to $4.10 to $4.60, the highest since the mid-1990s, according to the report.

That has a lot to do with a decline in global supply, mostly because drought has reduced the wheat crop in Australia to less than half of last year’s production, Glauber said.

Also in the crop report:

-The nation’s orange forecast is down 11 percent from last year’s crop. The 135 million box forecast for Florida oranges is down 44 percent from 2004, the last crop not ravaged by hurricanes.

-The forecast for beef production as well as meat exports has dropped, while cattle prices are expected to rise.

-Cotton production is forecast at 20.7 million 480-pound bales, up 2 percent from last month but down 14 percent from last year’s record high production. The outlook improved with better-than-expected yields throughout the Delta and parts of the Southeast.

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On the Net:

Crop reports:

http://www.usda.gov/oce/commodity/wasde/index.htm

http://www.nass.usda.gov/

AP-ES-10-12-06 1613EDT