January 30, 2009

Thank you to all who attended our Agricultural Seminar yesterday, we hope you were able to pull something of value from the day.

There isn't much interesting coming from the CBOT these days. Commodities were mixed again with corn losing $.03 today and $.11 for the week. Soybeans gained $.10 today but were down $.30 for the week. The Argentine weather situation hasn't changed a whole lot this past week as it is still dry, current forecasts however call for decent coverage of 1 -2 inches over the next week and that has been enough to keep prices in check. On the demand front we have seen a definite pick-up in corn export sales as we have now put in two weeks in a row of over 40 million bushels sold with a third likely considering USDA announced a 213,000 ton sale to Japan today.

It is interesting to read that many elevators are reporting relatively slow producer movement in the past month. Please keep in mind that this years corn crop may require extra care as much of the grain we have seen moving is relatively high in Foreign Material likely created by drying high moisture corn. We have seen discounts rising at most all destinations for FM so this is likely a problem in many areas. If you have farm stored corn we encourage you to monitor your storage bins to mitigate this problem. The best solution we know of is to move a couple of loads out of each bin to keep the core of the bin fresh.

Have a good weekend, Phil Farrell