Highlights
After manufacturing moldboard plows the past 185 years, John Deere announced it will build no more moldboard plows. Plows with steel mold boards instead of wood or cast iron is what made a blacksmith named John Deere rich.
Monday, June 20th is a holiday; no ag commodity trading.
USDA made no changes to South America’s corn crop, but increased soybean production in both Argentina and Brazil.
Indonesia announced it would fully open palm oil exports. China trimmed its edible oil import estimate by 13% to 7.43 million mt. Vegetable oils around the world were lower yesterday.
If you watched our rain day numbers for Mato Grosso, you know it started raining there about a week ago after 50 days of no rain and the driest April in 17 years. Kory Melby said yesterday:
Much rain this morning. Too late to do any good. If this rain would have come 50 days ago, Mato Grosso would have had a bin buster of a corn and cotton crop. It is still very good (safrinha corn crop), but…
France has offered to assist in clearing the mines in the area of the Port of Odessa, the main Ukrainian grain export port.
USA Inflation at the retail level in May was up 1% over April; that would be 12% per year. April’s inflation rate was 0.3% for the month, 3.6% annual rate. High inflation rate means higher interest rates which means a stronger dollar. In 1979, the inflation rate at the retail level was 13.9%. In 1980, the prime lending rate hit 21.5% on December 17th.
Take a look at the 6 to 10 day and the 8 to 14 day forecasts for the Corn Belt and you do not need to know anything else about the grain market this coming week.
Market Data
This morning:
Crude oil settled at $120.47, down $1.04
The dollar index settled at 104.19, up 0.97
July palm oil settled at 6,143 MYR, down 309. The contract high was made April, 29th at 7,229 MYR. Palm oil owns 36% and soybean oil owns 28% world market share.
December cotton settled at $122.36, down $2.57 per cwt. The contract high was made May, 17th at $133.79 per cwt. Cotton competes with soybeans and corn for acres.
July natural gas settled at $8.850, down 0.113. The contract high was made June, 8th at $9.664. Natural gas is the primary cost to manufacture nitrogen fertilizer.
July ULSD settled at $4.3667 per gallon, down 0.0370. The contract high was made yesterday at $4.5135. ULSD stands for Ultra Low Sulfur Diesel.
Rain Days Update
The Western Corn Belt has 1 more rain days in the 10 day forecast than yesterday and the Eastern Corn Belt has 4 more rain daysthan yesterday.
The 6 to 10 day forecast updated every day at: https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/predictions/610day/
Explanation of Rain Days