Mark's Market Talk for April 8, 2024

It rained on Easter Sunday and the story goes we will see rain the next 7 Sundays. Right now, I think most would take this rain as we are still extremely dry. Our area has only seen small showers, but other parts of the corn belt have enjoyed some decent rainfall. Currently Iowa is the only major corn growing state that still has some sizable areas in a drought condition. This has taken some of the weather risk out of the markets for now as most areas have enough topsoil to get the crop up and growing. The South American weather is non-threatening right now as they are getting adequate rainfall. So, we come back to the events at hand and for many producers their number one concern is marketing the 2023 grain they still have on hand. We had what many thought was a friendly corn acre report on March 28. Corn closed 15 higher that day but we have struggled since and closed 8 cents lower last week. Basis levels still have some strength even though there is a wall of old corn waiting to come to market. This needs to be watched as large-scale bushels start moving once the crop is planted. Basis and board levels may both trade in unusual patterns until the corn is planted and out of the ground. Late May/early June can provide a good marketing time most years. This doesn’t feel like a normal year so some of these time-tested trends may not hold up this year. A trendline yield will keep us well above a 2 billion carryout and that will not support 5.00 futures unless the rest of the world has production problems. The bean market dropped 7 cents last week for many of the same reasons corn suffered. Crude had a good week closing above 87.00 which should be giving more support to both corn and beans prices. However, the more our government talks about green energy the more nervous the fund traders are to the grain markets. It appears a lot of people are overlooking our capability to produce energy efficient biofuel that is sustainable and more environmentally friendly than fossil fuels. We need to keep pushing our leaders to recognize this so we can regain profitability.