soybeans

Ahead of today’s meeting of Chinese President Xi Jinping and President Obama, Chinese trade groups signed contracts to buy more than 484 million bushels of U.S. soybeans, a deal worth $5.3 billion, said the U.S. Soybean Export Council.

Global inventories of wheat and soybeans will stand at record highs at the end of the current marketing year, swollen by huge crops, said the International Grains Council in its monthly Grain Market Report.

Farm Belt farmers are headed for the lowest returns in years for operator and land from their corn and soybean crops, says economist Gary Schnitkey of U-Illinois at farmdoc daily.

Farm-gate prices for corn, soybeans and wheat, the three most widely planted crops in the country, "have declined sharply from record levels set in recent years and no quick price recovery is expected," says the University of Missouri think tank FAPRI in an update of its agricultural baseline.

The government plans to pro-rate subsidy payments for 2014, 2015 and 2016 grain and soybean crops, says economist Art Barnaby of Kansas State U at the Ag Manager website.

Economic turmoil in China, the world's largest importer of rice and soybeans, could dampen world trade in feedstuffs and soybeans, said the International Grains Council.

Some farmers in central Illinois turned to hand hoeing of soybean fields to get rid of weeds that herbicides don't kill, says DTN's Pam Smith.

Subsidy payments under the new Agricultural Risk Coverage program will vary by as much as $90 an acre among counties in the same state for 2014 crops, said economists Carl Zulauf of Ohio State and Gary Schnitkey of U-Illinois.

The FDA's announcement of a three-year phase out of most uses of trans fats, usually present in foods as partially hydrogenated oils (PHOs), may not be the end of the story, says Time. The replacements for PHOs "have their own problems."

Crop-insurance claims by farmers for prevented planting are up by 48 percent this year, said Bloomberg, a reflection of the cold and rainy spring. Growers filed claims on 2.3 million acres of corn and nearly 2.2 million acres of soybeans, said the news agency, based on its review of federal data.

The corn and soybean crops will be slightly smaller than forecast by USDA, says Pro Farmer at the end of a week-long sampling of fields across the Midwest and northern Plains.

Corn and soybean growers will harvest smaller crops than projected by the government, according to a private survey of 1,300 growers, but that will mean little relief for depressed market prices.

The government will update its projections of the corn and soybean crops tomorrow at noon ET with analysts expecting a record-setting fall harvest. If the expectations prove true, the second year in a row of mammoth crops would leave the country awash in grain and drive down commodity prices. At Chicago, corn for delivery in December closed on Wednesday at $3.98 a bushel, down 1.6 percent for the day; in May, corn sold for more than $5, said Agrimoney.

Corn and soybeans are the two most widely grown crops in the nation, forecast at 174 million acres this year, or slightly more than half of the land devoted to the two dozen "principal" crops of the United States.