Mark's Market Talk

Last week the markets were a little quieter though corn and beans both closed lower. May corn ended the week 6 cents lower while Dec was unchanged. May beans were down 15 cents while the Nov contract closed 11 lower. All eyes are on this weeks USDA reports which contain both a supply and demand report, and a prospective planting report. This duo is almost always a mover and this year it could be a big mover. However, there is no clear picture of what they will have to say. The corn carryout could be lowered now that China has made several large purchases the past 2 weeks. But the report is of March 1 so it will depend on whether the USDA raises their export number since they failed to in the last report. Ethanol production has slowly increased so that may help a little. Hog inventories are lower so eventually that may affect corn consumption. The bigger part of the report will be the planting intentions. Private estimates predict we will plant 93.1 million acres of corn compared to 90.8 million last year. The average bean acre guess is 90.1 acres compared to the 83 million that was planted last year. To do this they are estimating the pre plant acres will drop from last years 10 million acres down to 2 million this year. This is very likely due to the higher values we have for new crop. We all know that weather will still play a big role in all of this. An early dry start to planting will encourage more corn acres while a wet cold start could push more acres to beans. We can discuss the what ifs all day, but I think we just as well save the ink, and we can go further next week when will have more answers than we have today.