A free webinar titled Crop Marketing Strategies will be presented on at 7 p.m. July 16. Featured speaker will be Steve Johnson, Iowa State University Extension farm management specialist. He will review the latest USDA adjustments to planted acreage, crop supply and demand, and cash price projections. He will also highlight crop marketing strategies and tools, and discuss the potential for weather challenges this summer and storage considerations this fall.  

The webinar will last one hour, followed by questions. The webinar is free but requires preregistration. If you miss the live webinar, search for Webinar Replay and Resources on the Virtual Ag Marketing Clubs at extension.iastate.edu/polk/VAMC. For more information, contact Steve Johnson at 515-957-5790 or [email protected]. 

Acreage, weather uncertainty 

With the start of summer, weather becomes critical to corn and soybean pollination. Acreage and weather uncertainty and resetting futures price objectives for marketing your corn and soybeans are important considerations, Johnson says.  

The June 30 USDA Acreage Report, based on surveys earlier in the month, estimates U.S. corn planted acreage in 2020 at 92 million acres, up 3% from last year and down from the March 31 Prospective Plantings estimate of 96.9 million acres. The nation’s soybean planted acreage is now estimated at 83.8 million acres, up 10% from last year and up slightly from the Prospective Plantings estimate of 83.5 million acres. 

The July 10 WASDE Report released by USDA kept corn yields for 2020 at 178.5 bushels per acre, unchanged from the June estimate. This report is the first to incorporate the new acreage estimates out of the June Acreage report. 

New-crop corn ending stocks are projected at 2.64 billion bushels on Aug. 31, 2021, which is 680 million bushels less than June’s estimate of 3.32 billion. New-crop soybean ending stocks are projected at 425 million bushels, which is 10 million bushels more than the June estimate of 395 million. 

“It’s easy to get bullish when corn and soybean futures prices bounce off of extremely low-price levels like they did on June 30,” Johnson says. “You can expect price volatility for new-crop corn and soybean futures during July, especially as pollination time for corn and soybeans occurs. Weather forecasts the next few weeks will become the driving factor that determines when and at what futures price levels the highs occur as commodity funds position to capture profit.” 

Source: ISU, which is solely responsible for the information provided and is wholly owned by the source. Informa Business Media and all its subsidiaries are not responsible for any of the content contained in this information asset.