Headlines:                                                                                                     

  • A Bright Spot in 2017-As the year winds down, beef exports have been a bright spot for agriculture
    • As the year winds down, beef exports have been a bright spot for agriculture. Year-to-date sales over 14% above last year continue to exceed expectations, as well as the five-year average. With the benefit of hindsight, it looks somewhat simple. There were a number of variables that came into play over the last 12 months that helped support beef prices and exportable beef.
  • Applicators Warned Illinois Officials About Potential Dicamba Damage
    • The Illinois Department of Agriculture was warned a year ago about the potential crop damage that could be caused by the herbicide dicamba if the department didn’t tighten regulations on the herbicide’s use, according to department documents. The warning came from an industry group of pesticide applicators during a December 2016 meeting held to discuss whether the pesticide should be designated as “restricted use,” which means that only certified applicators can apply the pesticide. A non-restricted use pesticide can be purchased and applied by anyone, and records of application are not required.
  • Harvest Carbon From the Air
    • Carbon is as precious as gold to plants. Working with water and sunlight, carbon makes plants grow. Plants assimilate carbon in the form of carbon dioxide, extracting it from the air to make roots, shoots, and leaves. With the help of soil microbes, the plants then transfer the carbon to the soil through roots and decomposing residue. The stable storage of this carbon below ground not only builds soil organic matter and improves future crops but also, like a pressure valve, relieves the atmospheric carbon buildup.

Summary:

It was quite the uneventful abridged trading day ahead of the Christmas holiday break. January Soybean futures will have its first notice day next week on Friday December 29th and after a series of down days Beans were able to finish the day flat with gains of 1 ¼ to 1 ¾ cents across the board through the July contract. Many of the South American regions that had beneficial rain in their forecasts for this week received said rain and making it hard for Beans to mount any headway this week. The USDA reported 252k metric tons of Soybeans for the 2017-18 marketing year sold to China. Corn finished the week in the same fashion in which it started posting another positive day ranging from 1 – ¼ cent. Trading today remain in a tight range with light volume as would be expected for this time of the year. There is still talk of cold and dry weather in the plains as far as Wheat is concerned but the advances that we had been seeing all week finally paused today. Wheat was down 1 ¼ to 2 cents across its contracts.