Brownfield

Soybeans closed sharply higher Thursday. The soybean market traded softly higher overnight which picked up early in the session. Soybean futures are continuing to gain strength on South American drought conditions, even with rainfall in parts of Brazil. Traders are expecting strong adjustments in USDA’s global supply and demand report coming out tomorrow. Expectations of tightening ending stocks have been bullish for the market. A lack of a downward adjustment […]

A dairy organization leader says many farmers are reluctant to speak out on dairy pricing reform, even though the present system has harmed them. Laurie Fischer is the President of the American Dairy Coalition, which recently hosted an online discussion about dairy pricing issues. She says, “One of the items that came up and it continues to come up in our conversations is a fear for dairy farmers to speak […]

At the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, live cattle were mostly higher and feeders were mixed watching for additional cash business to develop.  June live cattle closed $.12 lower at $134.10 and August live cattle closed $.40 higher at $136.10.  May feeder cattle closed $.47 lower at $159.47 and August feeder cattle closed $1.57 higher at $174.27.   Direct cash cattle trade activity was quiet following three days of light to moderate […]

An Eastern Nebraska farmer says fuel and fertilizer prices are top of mind this growing season. Quentin Connealy says he’s shifting some corn acres to soybeans because of record-high fertilizer prices. “Bean prices are good and with couple of years of corn, we can still manage some pretty good soybeans on the river bottoms.” He tells Brownfield the change is only for this year. “Usually, we go three years with […]

Heading into the start of planting season a northwestern Ohio farmer says field conditions look better than he expected. Nathan Eckel tells Brownfield he had a really good freeze this winter. “That forgave a lot of the sins that we did this last fall with the wet condition that we had,” he says.  “Not a lot of tillage got done.” However, he says his winter wheat crop didn’t fare well.  […]

Consumers could see varying egg supplies and prices leading up to the Easter holiday. Brian Earnest, a lead protein analyst with CoBank, says there are several factors impacting eggs at a time when they are typically featured at many grocery stores. Healthy Living: ...

Growers are slightly less optimistic about farmland values, according to the latest Purdue University/CME Group Ag Economy Barometer. Jim Minert is the director of the Purdue Center for Commercial Agriculture. “People are not quite as optimistic about farmland values going forward as they were earlier,” he says. “Conversely, they’re not telling us farmland prices are going to go down. They’re not negative about farmland prices. They’re just not convinced maybe […]

Higher prices and product availability concerns are forcing a southern Indiana farmer to book his products earlier than normal.  Ben Kron raises corn and soybeans in Evansville.   “I put in a lot of orders for all my inputs very early and paid for them, that way I made sure with my suppliers as soon as they came in that I had them,” he says. “This year it seems like as […]

An ag economist is questioning whether a large U.S. corn export sale to China earlier this week is a signal of this to come or just a one-off sale. The University of Missouri’s Ben Brown says he’s seeing some projections expecting China to purchase 250 million more bushels of U.S. corn this year, but… “To do that, we’re going to have to start seeing sales in the next couple of […]