Serious oversupply looms for renewable diesel
The boom in renewable diesel is driving U.S. production capacity far above the market for the fuel, said agricultural economist Scott Irwin of the University of Illinois on Thursday. “It’s going to be a very ugly 2024” for refiners, said Irwin during a webinar.
U.S. crop sector insulates itself from world market with biofuels, says analyst
After decades of pursuing sales to foreign buyers, the U.S. crop sector is “once again becoming domestic market-focused, due mainly to biofuels policy,” said Scott Irwin, an agricultural economist at the University of Illinois, on Wednesday. It would be a significant, albeit gradual, change in focus.
Big crops and lower prices for U.S. farmers in 2024
American farmers will harvest monster corn and soybean crops this year, including the largest soybean crop ever, at 4.5 billion bushels, and the third corn crop in four years to top 15 billion bushels, projected the Agriculture Department on Thursday. Season-average prices for the crops would fall for the second year in a row from the spike in commodity markets created by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
EPA order allows sale and use of existing stocks of dicamba
Retailers are allowed to sell and farmers are allowed to use existing stocks of the weedkiller dicamba on this year’s soybean and cotton crops no later than July 30, said the EPA on Wednesday. A federal judge in Arizona overturned the EPA’s approval of three dicamba-containing herbicides last week, potentially disrupting the spring planting season.
Drought more widespread in corn and soybean areas than wheat territory
Half of U.S. corn and soybean territory is in drought, compared to one-third of wheat land, said weekly drought reports on Thursday. Drought is far less prevalent for winter wheat than it was a year ago, while conditions for soybeans are little changed and corn has seen an 11 percentage point decline, said the USDA’s Ag in Drought report.
Brazil a stronger U.S. competitor in soybean sales
In the past decade, Brazil has improved its network of roads, railways, and ports, “significantly altering” its competitiveness with the United States in the world soybean market, said an Agriculture Department report on Thursday. Continued improvements would bolster Brazil’s standing as the world’s largest soybean producer and exporter.
Soybean oil rapidly gaining ground as renewable diesel feedstock
The skyrocketing growth in the production of renewable diesel has been accompanied by a dramatic expansion of soybean oil as a feedstock for the fuel, said three University of Illinois agricultural economists on Wednesday. Soybean oil’s share of the feedstock market has tripled in the past few years, to 27.4 percent.
Precision ag usage is highest in top row-crop states
Farmers in the top corn, wheat, soybean, and hog states are twice as likely as farmers in smaller-volume states to use precision agriculture practices, such as GPS guidance, said the USDA’s farm computer report on Thursday. Usage often topped 50 percent in the top row-crop states, while the U.S. average was just 27 percent.
GM crops grown on 55 percent of U.S. cropland, says USDA
Farmer adoption of genetically modified crop varieties is spreading beyond the well-known dominance of the major field crops of corn, soybeans, and cotton, said a USDA report. When lesser-known GM crops such as canola, potatoes, and apples are counted, about 55 percent of U.S. cropland is planted to GM varieties, said the Economic Research Service report.
Winter wheat crop in slightly better condition
Nearly half of the U.S. winter wheat crop is in drought but its condition improved slightly in the past week, said the USDA on Tuesday. The weekly Crop Progress report also showed growers in the upper Midwest were rushing through corn and soybean planting after a slow start due to cold and wet weather.
Corn and soybean returns sink as market prices fall
For the first time since 2015, Midwestern farmers face negative returns from corn and soybeans grown on rented land, three agricultural economists said Tuesday at the farmdoc daily blog. They estimated a loss of $99 an acre for corn and $13 a bushel on soybeans, based on rising production costs and a downturn in market prices.
Drought, biodiesel boom pinches world soyoil trade
The boom in production of renewable diesel fuel has pushed U.S. soybean oil prices so high the commodity is uncompetitive on the world market, said USDA analysts on Tuesday. Drought in Argentina, the world's leading soyoil exporter, also will be a major factor in the lowest volume of soyoil imports worldwide in five years.
Farmers expect a revenue payoff from growth in renewable diesel
Farmers are far more bullish about the chances of expansion of the renewable diesel industry than in ethanol, the dominant "green" fuel in rural America, said a Purdue University poll on Tuesday. The telephone survey for the monthly Ag Economy Barometer also found nine of 10 farmers expect higher soybean prices at the farm gate as more and more renewable diesel fuel reaches the market.
Global corn trade tightens as Argentine, U.S. exports dip
Drought in Argentina and lackluster sales in the United States, two of the world’s major suppliers, will reduce global corn exports to their lowest volume in three years, said USDA analysts on Wednesday. Shipments from another leading source, Ukraine, were in question because an extension of the Black Sea Grain Initiative past March 18 has not been resolved.
Low water on Mississippi hits grain prices at the farm gate
Farmers in the Midwest and the mid-South are paying the price for low water on the Mississippi River in the form of lower cash bids for their corn and soybeans — as much as $2 a bushel lower for soybeans, said USDA economists on Wednesday. At the same time, the cost of transporting fertilizer upriver has increased, and neither situation is likely to change before late winter.
World grain stocks to fall for sixth straight year, says IGC
With world corn production down 4 percent, the global stockpile of grain will shrink for the sixth year in a row, said the International Grains Council on Thursday. In a monthly report, the IGC said the 2022/23 global harvest would be 1 percent smaller than last season’s record output.
Climate change will lower Farm Belt yields ‘as soon as 2030,’ says report
For decades, farmers in the Midwest and Plains have reaped ever-higher yields per acre, but “climate change threatens to slow or reverse this productivity as soon as 2030,” said the Environmental Defense Fund on Wednesday. The “climate burdens” would worsen through 2050, the nonprofit group said in a report.
Despite small crop, U.S. is top cotton exporter
U.S. cotton exports will shrink by 14 percent this trade year, the result of a drought-stunted crop, but America will remain the No. 1 supplier to the world market, said the USDA on Thursday.
U.S. corn and soy crops wilt during hot and dry summer
The drought-hit corn and soybean crops are smaller than expected, said the government on Monday, slicing 451 million bushels from its estimate of the corn harvest and 152 million bushels from its soybean forecast. The revisions reduced this year's crops to also-rans instead of contenders for the record books.