Pro Farmer's First Thing Today: Unemployment Rate Drops, OPEC to Boost Production and More
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Good Morning farm country. Davis Michaelsen here with your morning update for Monday, April 5. From Pro Farmer’s First Thing Today, these are some of the stories we are watching this morning:
Old-crop corn futures are trading midrange and chopping around unchanged, while new-crop futures are trading high-range and up 6 cents. Soybean futures are posting solid gains of 11 to 14 cents to start the week, with future thus far stopping short of challenging last week’s contract highs. SRW wheat futures are 2 cents higher, and HRW and spring wheat futures are mixed to higher. Crude oil futures are under pressure, and the greenback is again holding near unchanged. Many stock exchanges across the globe are closed in observance of Easter. Markets in China and Hong Kong are closed for the Qingming Festival.
USDA today will issue its first Crop Progress and Condition Report of 2021 and on Friday it will release updated supply and demand forecasts.
The expected first look at President Joe Biden's fiscal 2022 discretionary budget request was not unveiled Friday. It seems there are funding disagreements among some departments, with most of the focus on the Pentagon.
Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga will become the first foreign leader to hold a face-to-face meeting with President Biden in a summit planned for April 16, where China will be high on the agenda.
The U.S. economy added 916,000 jobs in March, up from 416,000 in February and the most since August. The unemployment rate edged down to 6.0% from 6.2% in February in a sign that the recovery was accelerating.
OPEC and an alliance of other top oil producers agreed to boost their collective production by more than two million barrels a day over the coming months, betting on resurgent demand as the pandemic recedes.
Mortgage rates are climbing. The average for a 30-year loan was 3.18%, up from 3.17% the prior week and the highest since June, Freddie Mac data showed. Rates have increased from the record low of 2.65%, reached in early January.
After several brands, including Nike and Adidas, said they would no longer buy cotton from Chinese suppliers in Xinjiang over reports that the growers rely on forced labor by ethnic minorities in China to produce their cotton, Beijing called for a boycott. But now, sales of most of the boycotted stuff are soaring as Chinese consumers rush to buy items, lest the government block their sale entirely.
A cold winter, high density of pigs amid restocking and new strains of African swine fever fueled new outbreaks of the virus across China’s northeast, northern China and Henan province, the country’s third-largest hog producing province, according to Reuters. At least 20% to 25% of the herd was affected according to a source.
Last week’s cattle kill fell 6.2% from the week prior, with processing down 3.5% from year-ago, with some holiday downtime coming into play. Meanwhile, boxed beef prices continue to soar. Cash cattle prices climbed to $117 to $120.50 late last week, with the western Corn Belt leading gains.
Lean hog futures ended last week on a strong note, with bulls in part propelled by a surge in weekly pork export sales to a new high for 2021. Cash hog bids jumped $2.24 nationally on Friday.
