Good Morning,
Corn is struggling to find its direction on the CBOT as traders continue to watch the Pro Farmer tour reports and news regarding the Biofuels industry. Lower projected yields continue to come from the tour which is not in line with the USDA’s numbers from last week. This is supportive to the markets, but is being met with reports of more and more ethanol plants slowing down or shutting down due to terrible margins. President Trump is set to meet with the USDA’s Perdue and the EPA’s Wheeler today to discuss potential options to support Biofuel producers.
The ProFarmer Tour pegged corn in Illinois at 171.1 bpa, down 10 bpa from the USDA’s August estimate. On the Iowa leg, corn yields in western part of the state were better than expected, but surveyors will still need to work their way through the eastern portion today before can get an accurate feel of just how ProFarmer’s estimates stack up against the USDA forecast for Iowa of 191 bpa.
It will be interesting to see just how ProFarmer ends up calculating their estimates when they release them during their final meeting Friday. The lack of muturity has been a big problem throughout the Tour, but in particular across the northern third of Illinois. Normally participants take more than 200 samples in order to help build their forecast; however, so much corn was planted in June and beans in July that they were only able to get just a fraction of the sample size they were expecting due to the lack of maturity.
Late yesterday a story broke about the USDA pulling all of its staff from the annual crop tour after an employee was threatened by an angry farmer. Frustrations have only grown over the past few weeks after this month’s WASDE crop report appeared to ignore the damage from this spring’s historic flooding. When you factor in all the additional stress placed on producers due to the trade war with China, falling farm income and tighter credit conditions, it is not tremendously surprising that farmers have begun to vent.
Have a Safe Day!
Garry Gard
920-348-6844
ggard@didionmilling.com
