There hasn’t been a lot of recent movement in grain prices. Dr. Kim Anderson, a grain market economist with Oklahoma State University Extension, says there isn’t a lot going on to push prices in either direction.
“There’s not anything thing going on right now. We’ve got the winter wheat crop, it’s all planted. It’s in relatively good condition both in the United States and around the world. We’ve got the corn and soybean summer crop plantings coming up, but again, moisture is relatively good around. I think the market feels like they’ve got a good handle on things in the U.S. and the world, and there’s not much happening.”
Anderson says the USDA report ON Thursday will provide some direction.
“The report that the entire market’s waiting on is a prospective plantings report that will be released Thursday, March 28th. It’ll have the estimates for all the summer crops, including spring wheat, and it’ll have pretty much the final planning estimates for your hard red winter and soft red winter wheat, so that’s a big report. And then you’ve got the quarterly stocks report that the market always watches because that tells us how much product we got in the bin or in storage.”
He talks about what to watch for.
“Well right now I’m watching harvest prices. Pretty much all our wheat from 2023, corn, beans, everything’s pretty much been sold, so I’m watching harvest prices. You look at wheat right now. You know we’ve talked about it moving sideways. It’s been moving from about $5 to $5.50 – five and a quarter, right now, right in the middle – when you look at the stocks-to-use averages for the world and the U.S. are right at average. So, you take our prices would be around $5.80 for harvest delivery.”