On this episode of the Purdue Commercial AgCast, Nathanael Thompson and James Mintert explore what’s been taking place in the Eastern Corn Belt on corn basis, the May/July CBT corn spread, as well as the July/September CBT corn spread, and discuss how you might pursue some marketing strategies for the remainder of the ’22 crop that you might have in storage. 

Over the past several years, maintaining agility and absorption capacity has been a solid mechanism to deal with strategic risk. Absorption capacity has enabled farms to maintain some sense of stability with market turbulence caused by increases in input prices, Covid-19, trade restrictions, higher rental rates, fluctuations in labor availability, ongoing geopolitical conflict, and market downturns. As farms face these obstacles there is also a greater need for agility, including innovative techniques that can reduce business costs, enable workers to shift assignments to meet changing business needs, and diversify to reduce risk.

In its most recent World Agricultural Supply & Demand Estimates (WASDE) report published on April 11th, USDA estimated that 2022 crop corn exports would total 1.85 billion bushels, equal to about 13% of U.S. production. If realized the 1.85 billion bushel forecast would result in the second lowest export total of the last decade and would be down sharply.

April 13, 2023 crop basis update on forward contract bids, corn and soybean basis outlook, and new crop corn and soybean futures.

Is your farming operation considering farm growth in the near future? Michael Langemeier discusses farm growth with Farm Marketer’s Tracy Brunet on the Impact Farming podcast.

Most of the recent discussion involving input price changes in U.S. production agriculture has focused on fertilizer prices, which have declined during the last few months. Other inputs have not necessarily experienced this decline in prices.

This spreadsheet compares conventional and organic rotations over a ten-year horizon. Specifically, net returns are compared for a conventional corn/soybean rotation, a conventional corn/soybean/wheat rotation, and an organic corn/soybean/wheat rotation.

Purdue ag economist James Mintert and Michael Langemeier break down the March Purdue University-CME Group Ag Economy Barometer and share some insights into farmer sentiment. This month’s survey was conducted from March 13-17, 2023.

On March 31st USDA released the 2023 Prospective Plantings and the March Grain Stocks reports. Purdue ag economists James Mintert and Michael Langemeier reviewed the information contained in both reports and discussed implications for the corn and soybean outlook in 2023.

The Purdue Center for Commercial Agriculture Crop Basis Tool is a web-based tool that provides access to weekly historical and contemporaneous corn and soybean basis data for local market regions in the eastern corn belt.

The Purdue Crop Cost and Return Guide offers farmers a resource to project financials for the coming cropping year. These are the March 2023 crop budget estimations for 2023.

The rates reported in this publication were compiled from questionnaires received from farmers, farm owners, farm custom operators, and professional farm managers in Indiana. Purdue Extension Educators distributed the questionnaires at meetings and events statewide during the last month of 2022 and the first three months of 2023. Respondents were asked to report custom rates they had either paid or received during the past year.

Slidedeck presentation by James Mintert given in Kokomo, Indiana on March 21, 2023.