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Another dry week in Iowa

Nearly the whole week was dry in Iowa, giving farmers plenty of time in the fields for spraying and side dressing. According to the Iowa Crop Progress report -with planting all done – focus is on the weather with signs of crop stress because of a lack of rain combined with hot weather.

Topsoil moisture levels are now at 70% short to very short, with subsoil moisture at 71% short to very short levels. Corn emergence is nearly complete except for a few replanted fields with corn conditions at 63% good to excellent – a full 14 percentage points below last week.

  Soybeans have reached 93% emergence, nine days ahead of the five year average, with conditions at 61% good to excellent -12 percent below last week – with scattered reports of blooming.

Iowa’s oat crop is starting to turn color, with 56% headed.

Grassley wants meat market watchdog

U.S. Lawmakers want to create a special position to combat anti-competitive practices in the meat industry. Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley, along with Senator Mike Rounds and Jon Tester, wrote a bipartisan bill looking at meatpackers.

  Grassley says increased consolidation is driving concerns about competitive access for livestock producers. The bill creates the Office of the Special Investigator for Competitive Matters inside the U-S-D-A’s Packers and Stockyards Division. The new investigator would oversee a team with subpoena power dedicated to preventing and addressing anti competitive practices.. and enforcing antitrust laws.

A look at the markets

Plenty of red in the Tuesday trade. Analyst Don Roose has the market details:

“The grain market really taking out a lot of risk premium in the market, the trade is fearful that we’re going to see some needed rain in some of these key areas, Iowa kind of at the epicenter right now, but also some rains in minnesota, wisconsin, those rains are targeted the bigger rain coming sunday, monday, tuesday so we will see, the trade feels comfortable now taking risk premium out of the market, we’ll see if it doesn’t materialize. Also we see a slowdown in the Chinese buying interest as we’re moving forward here switching a lot of their buying into South America. The cattle market is seeing some good strength in the feeder cattle today, big percentage of that is coming from sharply lower grain prices we see today. Packer margins continue to be huge, 850-900 dollars, been that way for a number of weeks, actually a number of months. The hog market technically continues to break down at these lofty levels, the Chinese hogs are down 54 percent versus a year ago so while the U.S. hogs are going higher on disease problems. Strong exports and domestic demand, the Chinese hogs are going lower on expansion.”

China buying beans

  As China’s hog herd recovers, soybean imports there are booming. Imports have grown significantly during the first five months of 2021 following a recovery after African Swine Fever hit the Chinese hog industry.

  Between January and May, China bought more than 38 million metric tons of beans – spending more than $19 billion, 44% higher than the same timeframe last year. The US and Brazil were again top suppliers with imports from both up about 13%.