Another Tough Week For Corn and Beans

It was another typical week in the corn market as COVID-19 disrupted everything related to agriculture. With over half of the ethanol plants in the United States shut down and now concerns about livestock with a number of pork processing plants shut down it is hard to be optimistic! There are plans to get them up and operating again but the unknown has traders factoring in contraction in beef, pork and poultry. I did read that egg sets were down sharply last week.

Soybeans closed lower every day last week. By the close Friday beans lost 25 to 30 cents a bushel. It was all about demand destruction in the soybean market last week. Traders anticipate that the poultry herd will drop by 5 to 10 percent. With hog prices at decades low prices the talk is the hog heard will contract too. With most of the United States in some form of lock down along with most of the world is it tough to argue that the bears are wrong.

The only hope as I see it is there is a lot of talk about slowly and in steps begin to open up the economy. Lets hope that is the case and there is not an increase in COVID-19 that would bring back another lock-down!