This week’s action:
Corn May up 14 at $6.59
Beans May up 75 at $15.05
KC Wheat May up 29 at $8.77
Feeders May up 7.575 at $205.20
Fats June up 5.35 at $162.05
Hogs May down 1.325 at $84.50
Corn Dec23 up 5 at $5.66
Beans Nov23 up 45 at $13.19
KC Wheat July23 up 26 at $8.60
Market Recap:
The news of the week was the March 31st Quarterly Stocks and Prospective Plantings report.
The quarterly stocks came in near expectations. As expected, USDA is forecasting farmers to plant a significant amount of corn this year with almost 92 million acres which is an increase of about 2.5 million acres compared to last year. If this seems unrealistic, US farmers planted over 93 million corn acres in 2021. On the flip side, the Dakotas/Minnesota are projected to plant 1.3 million more corn acres that last year.
Six of the last 10 years final corn area has been less than the March estimate. This includes last year when we lost almost 1 million acres.
51% of winter wheat acres are currently experiencing drought, which is an improvement from 69% to start the year. Kansas wheat ratings are 52% poor/very poor with 77% short/very short on subsoil moisture. Only 19% of Kansas wheat is rated good/excellent.
Commodity price changes over the last year:
Sugar: +9%
US CPI: +6.0%
Gold: +2%
Silver: -7%
Soybeans: -12%
Corn: -14%
Copper: -14%
Gasoline: -16%
Coffee: -19%
Heating Oil: -23%
Zinc: -27%
Brent Crude: -28%
WTI Crude: -31%
Wheat: -33%
Cotton: -41%
Lumber: -56%
Natural Gas: -61%
Forecast:
Attention is turning to the Minnesota/North Dakota/South Dakota snowpack and cold temperatures. It will be important for warmer weather to show up in April. Last year, North Dakota planted 2.9 million acres of corn and 5.6 million acres of soybeans.
Economy:
According to Creighton University, farmland values have increased 29 straight months and farmers have expanded their farm equipment purchases 25 of the last 27 months. According to the Case-Shiller Price Index, U.S. home prices have fallen for seven straight months. This data does not include February or March, yet.
The 25 biggest banks gained $120 billion in deposits in the days after Silicon Valley Bank collapse. Banks outside the top 25 size lost $108 billion in deposits. It is the largest weekly decline in deposits on record.
For the fiscal year of 2023, the interest payments on the federal debt are expected to be about $395 billion. This represents about 6.8% of all federal spending and is more than federal spending on elementary and high schools.
In February 2023, the U.S. federal debt hit its statutory ceiling of $31.4 trillion, or 123.4% of the nation’s income (GDP), which is up from just 55.6% of GDP in 2000. The debt ceiling was created under the Second Liberty Bond Act of 1917 and has been boosted by Congress 78 times since 1960.
In June of this year, expect Congress and the Biden Administration to raise the debt ceiling once again. As Nixon’s Chief Economic Advisor Herb Stein once said, “If something can’t go on forever, it will stop.”
Something that probably means nothing:
How much cash are you carrying these days?
The number of U.S. ATMs declined from a high of 470,000 in 2019 to 453,500 at the end of 2022.