Marketing Advice

By John Berry

I hesitate to talk too much about current grain markets today. As usual we can check the weekly report for both cash bids and harvest contract prices. The U.S. is well into the 2015 planting tasks with much of the acreage planted at this time. So, markets are digesting total planted acres and balancing this with expected weather from here to harvest. Prices have reacted as we would expect them to at this time of year.

The 2015 harvest will have a strong effect on our average price for the year and your guess on final harvested bushels is as good as any other guess. Let’s for a moment examine some of the possible scenarios generated from the current marketing year.

The following table gets at the possible prices for our major spring field crops. These are guesses from two recognized sources that can be compared to our own guessing. The way I interpret this information is that if I assume expected demand and “normal” crop growing conditions returning a “normal” harvest; we could have soybeans between $9.00 and $9.60 with corn expected to be between $3.85 and $4.30.

While I enjoy guessing prices and telling everyone what I think about the accuracy of other guessers, my main concern toady is – if we do get a “normal” 2015 corn and soybean harvest – can you cash flow your farm enterprises and family living needs? By now we have a fairly solid handle on the 2015 cost-of-production. . However, the determining factors of final revenue are yet to play out. In the meantime let’s practice a little thinking and maybe even a little planning on what we will do should the above guesses turn out to be reality.

Source:psu.edu