Here in South Central Nebraska harvest is at its beginning stages. A local elevator wanted corn these past few days to fill a train and was offering a premium if you could deliver. For those that were anxious to get started it helped get them into the field. This elevator was charging only 1/2 cent per point moisture for drying along with 1.5% shrink per point. Basis for October delivered corn had been running in the low 40 cent under area, but to get this train filled they were offering a basis of only 18 cents under. This prompted some to pick corn even though moisture was running around 30%.
So how are yields? Producers I have talked to have been pleasantly surprised thus far. A full pivot quarter hauled across the elevator scale averaged right at 200 bushels per acre (bpa) with the dryland corners figured in made its owner happy. He then moved to another farm that was going over 220 bpa. Talk is that many farmers will start soybean harvest this week. The only report I have heard locally about soybeans was that they had cut enough to fill a semi-truck and the moisture was running 13.5%, it's time to get started.
So what about a frost? It could frost tonight here in south central Nebraska and the impact on our soybean crop would be negligible. Many would welcome such an event to help kill the stalk for faster combining. If it would happen to frost the end of September as some thought earlier in the week, any damage to our corn crop would also be very minimal. I read recently that the last major early frost event that covered a sizable piece of the Midwest happened in 1973. That was a year before I came home from college and I can't remember that in this part of the country we suffered much from its effects. What I do know from all my years of farming is that there have been numerous threats from frost. Past experience has taught me that frost rallies normally don't hold for long and ultimately any rally due to frost is a good selling opportunity!
I like charts and working with numbers and one must always keep an eye on the technical side of the markets as well. It was interesting to me that the big up day on Tuesday of this week pushed the corn price up to the 61.8% retracement from the high made on August 3rd to the low made on September 8th in the electronic corn market. This caused some of the oscillators to go from oversold to nearly overbought. When looking at charts you are always trying to guess where the next move will be, but only Mother Nature knows what she is going to do with the weather. Many of the moving averages are consolidating in this 3.20 to 3.30 zone, drawing a line in the sand so to speak. Rally prices back over 3.60 and we could try and take out the August high of 3.76 and move higher. A break through these moving averages and then penetrate the 3.02 low as harvest shifts into high gear of this possible second largest corn crop sets the sage for the old saying that lower highs and lower lows signal a move to new lows. Besides the weather moving this corn market around, throw in the outside markets like Crude Oil, the US Dollar, Gold and the Stock Market and you can see why sitting on a combine all day may be simpler this fall. Stay in touch with your Allendale representative, it will let you focus on your business at hand...HARVEST!
Rich Mosier
Allendale Branch Manager at Davenport, NE
Toll Free 1.888.439.3636
rmosier@allendale-inc.com
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