The grains were able to post solid gains by the close of the fourth week of March, recovering all of the previous week’s losses and then some.
For one, most of the land in CRP belongs in CRP and two, the cost benefit for bringing the land into production for one year is not feasible.
There is also debate about increasing the ethanol blend to 15% to help alleviate some of the sting of halting the importing of Russian oil, which does have merit.
The Ag Minister in Ukraine estimated producers would only be able to get 7 million hectares of crop planted versus 15 million hectares last year due to logistic issues in getting inputs.
But just like the weather in North Dakota where you can wait a minute and it will change, the markets started to trade the headlines again the last week of March.
It was not surprising that the market came under heavy selling pressure as the grains have been trading up against the high end of their trading ranges for the past week to 10 days.
Although this will do nothing to help the soybeans crop , it will help the second corn crop in Brazil.
It was not enough to end the drought situation but was expected to be enough to help improve the winter wheat crop in a few states.
Colorado’s wheat crop dropped 8% to 11% good, Kansas’s crop did improve, showing a 7% increase in the good/excellent rating, now at 32% good/excellent.
The southern Plains and western regions of the northern Plains need the moisture the most, but it looks like those regions will see only light activity while the eastern regions of the northern Plains and Corn Belt could get hit hard by this system.
China was looking to auction off 500,000 metric tons of reserve soybeans on April 1.
The third week of March had cattle trading mostly steady as the market dealt with a bearish Cattle on Feed report.
The all hogs and pigs estimate came in at 98% of a year ago, kept for breeding came in at 98% of a year ago, and kept for marketing came in at 98% of a year ago.