In the News

Weekly Commodity

Highlights

Courtesy of

Brock Associates

www.brockreport.com

Nearby Futures 

Weekly Change

Friday’s

Close   

Year

Ago

Corn 

-38  

3.29 ½

2.82

Soybeans

+53

8.50

6.40

Wheat

-10

5.82

4.45

Cattle

unch

90.27

83.00

Hogs

-1.45

71.22

61.30

Cotton

+2.31

58.50

58.35

Weekly Comments: USDA’s new acreage estimates shocked the market and changed supply/demand expectations for the next marketing year and beyond. Farmers responded to $4 futures by planting an incredible 92.89 million acres to corn this spring. For perspective, only 78.3 million acres were devoted to corn production in 2006. Where did all those acres come from? The short answer to that question is soybeans. Soybean plantings were an astonishingly low 64.1 million acres, compared to 75.5 million last year. And the majority of this acreage swing was in the Midwest where yields tend to be high. In other words, this will have a huge impact on the size of crop. U.S. wheat ending stocks were a little larger than expected, but wet weather in the southern Plains has disrupted harvest and caused field losses. Also, non-durum spring wheat seedings were down more than expected. Despite high feed costs, hog producers have continued modest expansion. The market hog inventory in Friday’s report was up 2% and the June 1 sow count was 1% larger.