Grain Gleanings

As Harvest Slows Down...

By Becky Johnson, Elevator Location Manager, Salem

Wow another harvest is on the downhill slide. It was a pleasant surprise to most how well the crops yielded per acre considering the excessive heat over Labor Day weekend and the sporadic rainfall.

Thank you to all who brought your grain to us this harvest season.  We greatly appreciate your business and appreciate your understanding when changes had to be made at different times throughout harvest.

As the harvest slows down the markets have been showing an upswing over the last week, especially soybeans.  If you are wondering what you should do with grain regarding delayed pricing/storage, give one of our grain merchandisers or location managers a call.  We have several options to choose from that might be suitable for your marketing needs.

Enjoy the rest of your fall and have a blessed upcoming Holiday Season.

As tomorrow is Veteran’s Day, I want to close by giving a HUGE THANK YOU to all the past, present and future military men and women for their service.

11/10/2023

Harvest Logistics

By Matt Morog, Grain Department Manager

Corn harvest has surprised many on the yields in the area. Every single one of our truck facilities are running essentially full on corn or barely keeping up with transfers. Marion and Lyons are on the brink of running completely full of corn by early next week. All good problems to have for a grain elevator. When this happens though the stress for both farmer and people managing the facilities is heightened. We all have a common goal during harvest and that is to get as much grain moved from the field to the elevator, ethanol plant, or feed mill. The bigger issue fundamentally developing in our market is the inability to move shuttles of corn at a profitable level versus the ethanol plant. For instance, this year, there was never really an opportunity for shuttle loader in vicinity of an ethanol plant to sell an Oct/Nov corn train without taking a huge loss or having a bid 30-40c less than the ethanol plant. As an example, look at central SD, their nearby corn bids have hovered around 65-70 under the December corn futures the last few months. They are pricing shuttles at a reasonable profit and extending their space by doing so. Our DP policies and bid are about the only tool we have to extend harvest space and not take on too many bushels that should maybe get stored on the farm or delivered elsewhere closer. It’s been a challenging fall to say the least between the wet weather, space, and pressures of harvest. We appreciate the business entrusted to us this fall, and we will continue to make efforts to earn it in the future.   

11/3/2023

Grain Update

By Hunter Behrens, Grain Originator, Lyons

US grains and oilseeds are mixed as bean price action rotates back and forth between following meal or following an oil market that is finally starting to correct an extended move to the downside. Soybeans had a 20-cent trading range today with early support seen from a solid weekly soybean export sales number of 50.6 million bushels and soymeal sales of over 507k tons. Then rumors/chatter that China might have washed out or switched some soybean cargoes from Brazil to the US also added support to bean futures. But as the trade struggled to confirm these rumors and as SX failed to push above $13.00, the soybean market rolled over into the red and closed near their low of the day. Wetter weather maps for the dry areas of Northern Brazil also added pressure. Corn market closed slightly lower after choppy two-sided trade. Early support is seen from a larger than expected US weekly export sales number of 53 million bushels. This was the 2nd largest number of the marketing year. Yet the main buyer of those sales was Mexico of 30 million bushels followed by other typical US customers like Japan and Central American countries. Total export commitments are 135 million bushels above last year.

10/27/2023

Central Farmers has a mobile app that provides real time business information at your hands. By partnering with BUSHEL, we are able to empower you, our producers, to make informed and quicker business decisions with CFC.

• Access scale tickets, contracts, bushel balances, cash bids and market information— all from your smartphone.
• Access scale tickets virtually in real time, allowing you to know how many bushels you have delivered and how much still needs to be delivered. The Scale Ticket interface is easy to understand and tracks grade factors such as Moisture and Test Weight.
• Access your contracts that you have with any CFC location. You will be able to see the status of any contract to find out whether it is filled or is still open.
• Access real-time bushel balances of your grain across all CFC locations.
• Access delayed cash bids for all of our CFC locations. You will be able to access Grains, Livestock and Ethanol Futures from CME or MGEX.

You can find the App on Google Play for Android devices or the App Store for iPhones by searching for Central Farmers. Download it today!