North Gower Grains

Wednesday was a positive day for our markets.  Spot corn closed up 8 1/4, spot soybeans closed up 9, harvest winter wheat closed up 1/2 and harvest spring wheat closed up 2.  In the overnight trade corn is mixed, soybeans are negative and the wheat sector is positive.  Oil closed up $0.01 yesterday at $91.29 per barrel.  It is stronger in trading this morning with it now trading at $91.50 per barrel.  Our dollar started out yesterday morning at $0.725 US and then trended higher going up to $0.729 US early last night.  It has pulled back just a bit this morning with it currently valued at $0.7286 US.

It was nice to see all of our markets end positive yesterday.  Wheat prices traded most of the day on the negative side before closing just positive.  It looks like the massive world stocks were weighing on this market and also the high price of wheat in the US that makes it too expensive on the world market.  What overcame this were most likely fears that large portions of the US HRW wheat crop are not going to receive the required moisture in the short term.  The weather concerns for this crop are mostly limited to the HRW wheat market, not SRW wheat that is the majority of the winter wheat grown in our area.  We should note however that all wheat prices have recently rallied.

Weekly ethanol production in the US increased by 0.5% last week to come in at 1.120 million barrels per day.   This is the highest level in 5 weeks.  Both exports and blender demand decreased during the week with the net result that ethanol stocks increased by 2.5% up to 26.7 million barrels.  I also read a report that says the US consumer utilised more gas last week then they did over the same week last year.  It seems that the higher price caused by the war against Iran has not deterred US consumers from driving.  This was a nice positive report for the corn market.

The monthly soybean crush in the US was reported yesterday for March and it came in at 226.16 million bushels.  This is up from 208.8 million bushels in February and is much larger than the 194.5 million bushels crushed in March of 2025.  In fact the crush number is a new monthly record for March and is the second highest crush on record for any month.  Another positive announcement with this was that soybean oil stocks actually decreased last month instead of the large increase that was expected.  They came in at 2.039 billion pounds which was lower than the pre report estimates of 2.173 billion pounds.  All in all a very supportive report for soybeans and the market responded accordingly.

It was nice to report above on our commodities without really talking about the war against Iran.  Nothing really new to report today.  It looks like the marketplace thinks there is a good possibility that the ceasefire will hold with crude oil prices mostly stable.  Supposedly China has agreed to President Trumps request to not send Iran any war supplies.  Hopefully negotiations to end the war end with a positive response very soon.