Chuck Penner of Leftfield Commodity Research

 

It's a tight battle between corn, soybeans and cotton when it comes to acres in the U.S.

Chuck Penner, president of Leftfield Commodity Research, was one of the speakers at Day 1 of the Manitoba Special Crops Symposium.

He says, despite what headlines are saying, corn is not ahead by much, if at all.

"When you look at some basic revenue numbers, it does look like a slam dunk for corn, but when you pencil in some of the new crop prices, and new crop basis levels, as well as the much higher costs of putting them in, it's much more of a tie between corn and soybeans," says Penner. "The other thing is in southern states you have cotton competing heavily for acres, so that could take some corn and soybean acres too."

The U.S.D.A. further lowered its corn ending stock estimate yesterday. U.S. ending stocks are now expected to reach 675 million bushels, well below the trade's expectations heading into the report.

"It's going to keep the corn market very well supported. What the USDA was increase their estimate of ethanol use by another 50 million bushels. We though ending stocks were tight before, but they're getting even tighter," he says. "On the soybeans, really no effect, but there's probably some spillover effect from corn into wheat and soybeans."


~ Thursday, February 10, 2011 ~