Weekly Crop Commentary - 1/19/2024

Haylee VanScoy
Director for Grain Purchasing

Hope everyone has survived the frigid weather this week! The markets have been following temps this week and starting to bounce off their lows, but certainly still “cold.” Positive export sales this morning, along with rising tensions in the Red Sea, and a flash sale of beans to China brought some green back to the board for most of the day. Aside from that, there’s been little news to feed a bullish story on either corn or beans. South American weather continues to improve as we’ve seen better rains for northern Brazil. It may be time to re-evaluate your marketing strategies for both old crop and new crop.

Do you know what tools you have available to you in your grain marketing tool box? I encourage you to explore your options with your local merchandiser. Also, don’t forget that winter grain marketing meetings will be coming up next month!

Lou Baughman
Grain Merchandiser, Kenton (Region 1)

Another week has come and gone. I don’t know about you, but I am glad this week of ugly markets is coming to an end! At least we were green for most of today. Traders are still watching South America's weather; their forecast is still favorable. We had strong export sales last week. That is one positive remark for the market. I really don’t want to go into all the negatives today. If you have Delayed Price grain, we will be starting to send friendly reminders out since the market doesn’t look to improve any time soon. Continue to bundle up this weekend, the forecast says we will get a break from the cold next week.

Steve Bricher
Grain Operation Manager, Urbana (Region 3)

We are over half way through January already! I think everyone survived the cold snap we had this week and will be looking for warmer weather the rest of the month. If last week was the coldest weather we see this winter I think we will all be happy. I know I am getting old but the winters do seem a lot milder than when I was younger.

The corn, soybean, and what markets are hard to watch right now. We have no bullish news today to get markets to move higher. As I wrote last week, and the last several weeks, when you have adequate supply this is the type of markets you get. You have to be realistic in what the prices are going to do over the next 60 to 90 days. There is going to be a good to excellent soybean crop coming out of South America. Do not believe everything you see on the internet that the crop is drying. We heard that here in the US about the crop in Iowa last summer and they still averaged 200 bushel corn.

If you have grain at the elevator today am I going to get paid to continue to store that grain? With the cost of storage and interest, remember money matters today, can I cover the cost to continue to hold this grain?

We do need to start looking at the 2024 crop and when to start pricing that crop. Yes, today the numbers don’t look great compared to what we have seen in the last couple of years, but we have to look back to earlier in this article as I talked about adequate supply. Come on in and have a conversation about what we can do to help you get your 2023 crop sold and start looking forward to 2024.

Lisa Warne
Grain Merchandiser, Marysville (Region 4)

Snow. We didn’t get as much as predicted, but its plenty enough for me. It looks like round one of mud season will begin next week. In this short market week, grains continued to struggle early, but there were a few opportunities to sell in the green the last couple days. On Thursday, we saw a reversal after corn and soybeans made fresh lows, but then closed higher on the day. We were in the green most of the day Friday but are slipping negative as we get nearer to the close. We’ll watch next week to see what trend develops.

It's possible that we are in a new trading range and that your previous pricing goals need re-evaluated. If you have offers that were in the $5+ and $13+ range, the reality is we may not see those again for quite some time. As I mentioned last week, be sure to know your cost of production per bushel and at what level you can still make money. For corn and soybeans on delayed price, depending on date of delivery, most bushels have approximately $0.30+/- in charges right now. At what point can you sell, still making money, and stop accumulating DP charges? Give it some thought, call us to talk it through, and possibly put in some target offers to sell little amounts here and there. Have a great weekend and be careful out there!