|
 |
|
|
|||
 |
 
  
|
 |
|
 Jul. 19, 2012 Des Moines Register reports: Corn prices broke through their all-time record overnight as the September futures contract rose 11 cents per bushel to reach $8.06 on the Chicago Board of Trade's electronic Globex Exchange. The December contract, which prices this year's corn crop, was up ten cents per bushel to $7.94. The record price for any corn contract was $7.99 per bushel set in July, 2008. Soybeans have reached all-time highs as well, with the September contract up 23 cents per bushel to $16.71 and the new crop November contract up 21 cents per bushel to $16.41. The high prices are in response to the intense heat and drought over the Midwest, which is the most severe since 1988 and has prompted private estimates of this year's corn crop to be lowered to less than 140 bushels per acre. The market got a fresh push Wednesday when U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack said he did not think that it would be necessary to lower the federal Renewable Fuel Standard, which mandates at least ten percent of gasoline use come from ethanol. Vilsack made his comments after a meeting with President Obama. Rumors that the RFS might be cut in an effort to bring down the price of corn, and ultimately tame what are expected to be rising food prices, had been about the only brake on what has been a 50 percent rise in corn prices since early June. Parts of northern and eastern Iowa received light showers, amounting to between one-tenth and one-quarter of an inch of precipitation, far below what agronomists say is needed to replenish soils that have been substandard for moisture since last fall. The U.S. Department of Agriculture last year cut its forecast for the corn crop from the original 166 bushels per acre in May to 146 bushels per acre. Corn is going through its crucial pollination stage now in temperatures at least ten degrees hotter than advisable and soils depleted of moisture after ten consecutive weeks of below-average moisture in Iowa, Illinois, Indiana and Missouri. Soybeans, whose domestic stocks are at a record low, will go through a similar important period early in August when their pods are set and begin to fill. Meanwhile the updated U.S. Drought Monitor map shows the entire eastern half of Iowa now designated as "severe drought." Through last week the severe drought category had been confined mostly to the central third of the state from the Missouri to Minnesota borders. Indiana is hardest hit of the Corn Belt states. Tweet |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
