Pro Farmer's First Thing Today: WASDE Report Day, Colonial Pipeline Update and More
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Good Morning farm country. Davis Michaelsen here with your morning update for Wednesday, May 12. From Pro Farmer’s First Thing Today, these are some of the stories we are watching this morning:
Corn futures are fractionally to 7 cents higher with old-crop leading gains. Soybeans have roared to yet another set of contract highs, with futures up 9 to 25 cents, with old-crop leading gains. Wheat futures are choppy, with winter wheat favoring the downside and spring wheat the upside. The greenback and crude oil futures are both posting gains.
USDA’s first official balance sheet update for the 2021-22 marketing year will be issued today at 11:00 a.m. CT. Tight carryover supplies of corn and soybeans will heighten attention on USDA’s stocks projection for both marketing years.
Union workers at Brazil’s Port of Santos opted to delay a possible strike until next month. Initially, the work stoppage in response to uncertainty regarding when they would receive the Covid-19 vaccine had been planned for this week.
China’s consumer price index edged 0.9% higher year-over-year during April, which fell just short of expectations for a 1.0% increase, its National Bureau of Statistics reported. An 11% drop in pork prices from March to April helped ease price pressure.
Colonial Pipeline said it will know by day’s end whether it’s safe to restart gasoline and diesel flows. These have been on hold since criminal hackers targeted the company last week. The continued outage of the pipeline is causing major disruption as panic-buying has dried up gas stations across the U.S. East and South.
More Republican-led states are rejecting the $300 enhanced federal unemployment payments saying they provide an incentive for some people to avoid work. On Tuesday, Iowa and Tennessee joined the growing list of states that are moving toward the elimination of the extra benefits ahead of the program’s scheduled expiration in September.
Today, the United Nations is holding a virtual event planned by Britain, Germany, and the United States, on how to support the human rights of Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang, China.
Kristen Hillman, Canada’s ambassador to the U.S., said the country would strongly oppose any new proposals from the U.S. to resurrect mandatory country-of-origin labeling (COOL) for beef and pork. “We went through this in 2013, 2014 and 2015 and we are very firmly of the view that mandatory country of origin labeling is inappropriate.”
Cash cattle traded at an average price of $118.36 last week, down 53 cents from the week prior. There is some optimism about higher cash prices this week, though we’re also hearing reports that packers are struggling to secure enough workers. Boxed beef values continue to soar, though movement has slowed.
Lean hog futures faced pressure Tuesday, with traders booking some profits after the market’s historic rally. Cash hog bids shot $5.18 higher for the national average on Tuesday and the pork cutout value edged 63 cents lower.
