Wednesday May 12, 2010

Fact of the day: The official snack food of Illinois is popcorn. The Illinois General Assembly designated it as the official state snack in 2003.

Good afternoon bloggers! Last night and this morning we saw a significant rally due to China purchasing 10 cargoes of corn (6 cargoes from USA). There is speculation China's interest in our corn is because of a poor Chinese corn harvest and rising inflation. Though corn and beans rallied early, corn closed +1 cent at $3.78 and beans closed down half a penny at $9.65

Rumors from earlier this week proved to be true with China buying corn from USA. Corn sales activity for 2009/2010 were a marketing year high of 72.9mbu. This is the highest since January 2008. December 2010 corn finished the day at $3.92. Corn planting is going well and the rains which fell this week have definitely helped a lot of producers. Though the rains have helped producers around Illinois, some producers in northwest Indiana are 'waterlogged'. Producer movement has ramped up due to finished or wet fields. Some areas have fieldwork on hold and more of a focus has shifted to moving grain. Though some areas are more wet than favored, just be thankful we don't live in Wyoming/Colorado/Dakotas. Producers up there have a rare May snowstorm on their hands!

New crop beans were down on the day. Old crop beans posted unchanged to a penny gain. The mixed closing prices may be due to a lingering effect from the USDA report. The report said we may have a larger than ending stockpile of beans that analysts previously thought. USA nationwide bean emergence is just shy of 10%. Another 10.4mbu. of sales was posted for this week. Good to have a few solid weeks back to back. This is the second highest total since February (11.4mbu. sold). New Orleans bean values have decreased ~2% since last week. Bean exports have slowly declined as expected.

Stay classy Illinois,
Nathaniel Dubravec