Export spark all we need

MORTON – A spark of interest from the export side is all we need to keep seeing more upside moves in the markets.

Ellen Dearden of Ag Review in Morton acknowledges the processor part of the market for both corn and soybeans has been the driver of higher prices and the margins have remained good.

“These markets have just been oversold,” Dearden told The Central Illinois Farm Network this week. “I think we have the demand on corn bottomed out and we’ll continue to see corn demand improve but that market has been slow to move higher."

To start off the week, Argentina raised export taxes on corn and wheat 12 percent, which is about double what it was and they raised taxes on soybeans as well.

“That kind of sparked some ideas that maybe the U.S. would get some export business,” Dearden said.

Brazil soybeans are now about 20 cents a ton more than U.S. beans landed into Asia, so we do have good price competition currently for moving beans into these Asian markets. Also, the March wheat gains we saw Monday was impressive.

“This wheat market has seen a lot of spark from ideas that there is a lot of wheat that has not been planted.”

The cheaper dollar we have seen over the past week puts us right back into the competition with French and Ukraine wheat. Soybean oil has been a market that has been on fire, up about 50 cents on Monday. The strong crush is due to higher bean oil.

On the livestock side, many believe we are going to have big exports in the hog market, which appears to have reached the bottom and ready to move back higher.

Dearden has worked as both a broker and advisor and is strictly a market advisor currently. She has been in the business since the early 1980s and worked for several other companies before Ag Review. Dearden is married to a farmer and they raise cattle, corn and soybeans.