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A friend's brother who raises and trains horses in eastern Wyoming called him asking for hay sources as there is NO hay for sale from Pierre, SD west. Every single acre plus every road ditch that can be hayed is being hayed.

Same here, no hay. The answer I get is:

The hay (or other commodity, usually from the west coast) is being sold to Japan, China, and the Middle East. Highest bid gets the goods. Sell for the cash, to hell with feeding your own people.

I recall this was typical in third world economies. It doesn't even surprise me anymore - we are officially there.

Sadly I almost put 140 acres of alfalfa under pivot in 2009 but couldn't see us holding together long enough to make it worth the investment. Oh well.

I am getting ready to like cotton for a buy, cotton ginnings won't be out till August 16, Any body watching Cotton?

Beans push higher overnight. I think a price point mentioned was around 17.50 or so in an article a while ago. Corn is already past it's anticipated target and we haven't seen the newsreels yet of dead crops being plowed under. The speed of this move has been unbelievable. Yes, there is a pain level but apparently we haven't found it yet.

Drought watch: USA (obvious to everyone here), Russia, China (north east, north central), India (monsoon <80% of normal), N+S Korea (worst drought in 100 years), North East Brazil. This is a who's who of the world's big time food producers (ex the Korea's)

If this keeps going it could get sporting.

Goodlander: Heard anything about some rather scary (scarier) reports out about northern mexico and drought?

Map: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/temp-and-precip....


same system that is parked over the USA. Pretty ugly down there too, dead cows etc. Missed a lot of the veggie growing areas for the most part though (Baja etc).

Ok, thanks. That doesn't look any worse than it is here, but that's based on normal rain vs. received rain... So anyplace that gets marginal rain on average (like dry northern mexico) the drought is going to be more severe than someplace like here (east tennessee) where a drought is much drier than normal but we still get some rain, gardens can function with a minimum of additional water, etc.

Basically saying/asking: Someplace with marginal rainfall going into a drought means more crop wise than someplace that's got plentiful rainfall going into a drought, right?

Right?

Yeup, that is the way it goes (basically). The same as losing a testicle being a bigger deal if you only had one to start out with.

There are a thousand other factors that affect it (tillage practices, soil type, slope, drainage, organic matter content etc) but you are right.

One area in Mexico that usually harvests 100,000 tons of corn per year got 500 (five hundred) tons of corn this year.

Wow...

Anyway, it sounds like it boils down to pretty much all of northern mexico is in considerably worse shape than even we are...

How's the southern hemisphere doing? (I saw you mentioned NE brazil...)

n/m, I found a map: http://www.eldoradocountyweather.com/cli....

Odd. Kamchatka looks nasty on that map, and while I know there's pretty much no agriculture there, it was a bit of a surprise because that's a pretty wet place, normally.

It's satellite based, going off vegetation appearance.

Have anything worldwide (or southern hemisphere) for actual recorded rainfall drought conditions?

I don't have anything for actual rainfall numbers. Too many places to remember what is "normal" in any spot. I just go by above or below normal. It is like you pointed out before, everyone sets up their production for normal precip and temps. When it gets outside these normal ranges it messes with their system. July rainfall numbers in India would freak me out a bit too I think.

This was a good year to be zero/minimum tilling in a lot of places. Although in some areas it is so dry it would not matter much.

That is what I thought was going to happen, China's wheat crop not what was expected: http://www.agrimoney.com/news/us-officia....

I am expecting a few more of these "not quite as good as what we thought" reports to come yet.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/1....
Aug 10 (Reuters) - U.S. crop insurers have already paid out $822 million in indemnities this season....

USDA drops corn yield

The U.S. corn and soybean yields continue to get smaller, USDA says Friday. In its August Crop Production and Supply/Demand Reports, the USDA data is seen as bullish for the farm markets.

For corn, the USDA estimates the 2012 production at 10.779 billion bushels, vs. its July estimate of 12.970 billion bushels and the average analysts estimate of 10.971 billion bushels. U.S. corn yield has been lowered from 146 bu./acre to 123 bu./acre, compared to the average analysts estimate of 126.2 bu./acre. This is the lowest since 1995, if realized.

The USDA estimates the 2012 U.S. soybean production at 2.692 billion bushels vs. the July estimate of 3.050 billion and the average analysts estimate of 2.786 billion. The U.S. soybean yield estimate is 36.1 bu./acre vs. USDA's July estimate of 40.5 bu./acre and the average trade estimate of 37.2 bu./acre. If realized, Friday's yield estimate would be the lowest since 2003.

On Friday, the government pegged the U.S. 2012 All Wheat production at 2.26 billion bushels vs. the average analysts estimate of 2.220 billion bushels and the USDA's previous estimate of 2.224 billion bushels.

Jack Scoville, PRICE Futures Group vice president, says the Report. on its face, is bullish.

"But, given recent trade talk of disaster out there, these estimates are probably pretty much in the market. That said, I see nothing here to send markets down except for liquidation trading. We should be higher. But, we kind of already have traded these types of numbers. No reason to sell, but I bought these ideas already," Scoville says.

Jason Ward, Northstar Commodity Investment Co, says USDA was very aggressive in the yield cuts, but somehow made the carryouts stay above their patented 100 million bushels in soybeans and 650 million in corn.

"We need to see significant price rationing in the soybeans to achieve USDA’s usage numbers, because with a yield as low as 36.1 bushels/acre we have no carryout at the current usage. Beans must move higher to slow down usage," Ward says.

Corn really doesn’t need to move higher to ration demand, it just needs to stay here at $8.00 or higher, Ward says. "If it sets back to $7.50 it won’t ration demand. So, steady to higher would be enough to ration the corn demand, it will just take more time."

Ward adds, "Honestly, beans are still way too cheap at $16.45 Nov 12 with this yield. Scary to even write that, but that’s how I see it."

Surprisingly, the USDA Report was a little bearish to the wheat, Ward says. "If wheat stays below $9.00 corn won’t move higher."

Sal Gilbertie, Teucrium Trading president, says the corn per acre yield figure was reduced dramatically toward the low end of industry expectations.

"The resulting carry-out, or ending stock figure for the coming crop year of 650 million bushels is well below the traditional comfort zone of about one billion bushels and approaching a level many perceive as critical for efficient supply chain logistics," Gilbertie says.

This should provide continued support for corn prices in the near term, but many traders have factored this type of scenario into corn prices already, he says.

Soybeans are very tight, and depending on the weather over the next few weeks the soybean balance sheet could become even more critical than that of corn, Gilbertie says.

"The damage to the corn crop is already done, soybeans have the potential to tighten even further if it does not rain in the coming weeks. The current projected carry-out for soybeans of 115 million bushels is dangerously low, any further

reduction could mean soybeans take the spotlight from corn between now and the next report."

Further tightness in the soybean balance sheet would be extremely significant and put dramatic upward pressure on prices, but traders should use extreme caution and keep an eye on the weather, which will dictate the future of the soybean crop, Gilbertie says.

Any significant rain event in the next few weeks could pressure prices for soybeans dramatically.

Further to the the discussion on soybeans cross posted many of the the canola yields are coming in at half what was expected due to heat stress. Canola and heat do not go well together. This is why canola is grown in the northern states, canada and cooler areas of the world. Anecdotal stuff so far, no major market reaction to early news. Nice chart on canola though.

Winter wheat acreage will be interesting this year. I am guessing it will be quite moisture driven. Things don't tend to grow well when you plant them into dust.

Still limited spreads from Minneapolis to Chicago wheat. Feed complex is extremely tight, I would think this will have some roll over effects into next years crops via seeding intentions. If it can grow corn or soy it likely will grow corn or soy next year. The big boys in the room seem to really be liking the wheat right now (see COT).

India's monsoon still sucks. May be a good opportunity for some pulse crops to get a boost, many of them have been laggards in the price run-up's.

US Drought Monitor:

Goodland, I have a PM I would like to send you but can't but you email box is full.

Talk of big crops in canada putting pressure on some of the prices. There are some good crops out there for sure, however what is going into the bin is not up to expectations in most of the crops and most of the areas. Pro farmer should have better numbers by next week for the USA crop. There will be a lot of guessing on this crop size for quite a while yet.

India's monsoon is picking up, now only 14% down for the year. With the amount of food sitting out I am not sure if it will be worse to have less rain.

will clean out my mailbox in the next few days.

Goodlander, holy cow..what horrid grammar and sentence structure in my last post. I'm glad you can read what you think I said. I must have been drinking some wine. This time it was only some martini's and Bloody Marys. Will try to email you in a few days

Does this hurricane dumping water all over help out crops?

For the most part rains now will be too late to make a big difference for the cereals and oilseeds. It may help a bit with bushel weights but not enough to be a game changer by any stretch. Where it would help (assuming the rains spread north) is in improvement of the conditions for the winter wheat seeding.

Keep an eye on the wheat for next year. Winter wheat is going into the dust all over north america. There is nothing saying that it is required of the skies to provide rain any time soon. Winter wheat can still vernalize if it rains in the spring however harvest will be at least two weeks later than normal and yield is generally hurt (usually at least 15% reduction in near perfect conditions). The grains "crisis" of 2012 is not over yet, it has to rain for that to happen.

We only have a couple of hundred years of hard data from North America. Between 1200 and 1300 there was a period that it basically did not rain for 50-60 years. It will start raining on us again, the question is when. The fact that the monsoon season in India has picked up again is a hint that this el-nino wil be a sickly little bastard in North and South America if it even makes it here.

China is digging into it's emergency soybean stockpiles. They are talking about using 30-40% of them. Argentina's soy crop is making the news but that crop has come at the expense of wheat acres which are the lowest since 1907 (don't quote me on the year, but it is somewhere in there, making it a hell of a long time ago).

North America is the world's "surge tank" for food, if something goes really bad here there is no room for error anywhere else or they are ****ed.