09/30/24 Afternoon CommStock Report – Stocks are Out of Position with Demand

Our local ethanol plant briefly pushed their bid 25 cents over CBOT for a short period of time Friday, as despite the onset of harvest, the end-user pipeline is slow to refill. Same for soybeans. Spot soybean basis has improved as well. Cash soybean bids have been poking above $10 bushel which is a psychological trigger point for some farmers in order to spur consideration of sales. It is odd to see the basis improve as harvest activity initially ramped up but is likely to weaken when enough trucks cross scales. We have been asking the question as to how grain stocks have supposedly expanded year to year, yet end-users act short bought and needing supply. Again, this is regional.   Price lows, seasonal lows, were set in late February and again in late August related to commercial basis and price-later contracts where farmers let the pricing default to expiration. Farmers Should Stop Doing That!   USDA put quarterly corn stocks at 1.76 bln bushels which was 84 mln bushel below the average trade estimate. Demand continues to exceed trade expectations. There is not much sign of any increase in corn stocks west of I-35. In fact, in the flooded…