The North Carolina soybean industry has a $2.9 billion total economic impact and contributes to nearly 5000 jobs in total, according to a recent study from the National Oilseed Processors Association (NOPA) and the United Soybean Board (USB). That impact originates from the farms producing the high quality, high protein N.C. soy that customers demand. …
Driven, by historically tight stocks, the prospect of a third La Nina in South America and rapid inflation spurred by historically cheap money, CBOT soybean prices surged through the spring and settled into an elevated plateau marked by pricing volatility typical of the summer months. After reaching a record high of $17.69 per bushel on…
Agricultural commodity prices have covered a lot of ground in the past year. Soybeans, for example, began the year at $13 before rising to $16 in May and ultimately coming back to $13 today. While a growing basis has provided additional support for North Carolina cash prices over the course of the year, falling prices…
Every year, on March 31st the USDA releases its prospective plantings report – the first official glimpse into where acreage will shake out for the coming year. The report is based on grower surveys performed in the first two weeks of March and the timing of its release is a function of fairness, i.e. everyone…
The last several months have ushered in some exciting developments for North Carolina soybean exports. In January, Scoular announced they would be building a high-speed container loading facility at Wilmington, a reflection of the compelling economics of containerized exports from NC, and the culmination of a series of meetings and conversations between the Nebraska-based company…
There are only four countries that export significant amounts of commodity soybean products – the United States, Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay. Although Brazil recently surpassed the United States in terms of production, with a growing world population, hungry for protein, there is no getting around the fact that the world needs US soybeans. In summer…
Over the past two years, the US agricultural sector has been hit by a trade war with China (April 2018-present), the global disruption of African Swine Fever (August 2018-present), a series of hurricanes beginning with Florence (September 2018), and flooding in the corn belt (June 2019) all aggravated by a strong dollar that has made…
On January 6th, 1995 a man named McArthur Wheeler, wearing no mask, robbed two Pittsburgh area banks in broad daylight, along with an accomplice. Images captured by bank security cameras showed the would-be robber holding a gun to the teller and in April of that year were shared on the 11 o’clock news. Tips came…
The name of the game among producers in commodity markets is to support prices by winding down stocks. In this blog post we begin by exploring this relationship and then illustrate the lengths that producers, should, in theory, go to achieve tight stocks. In short, the relationship between ending stocks and price is often so…
Since record-keeping began in 1851, the daily probability for a named storm being present in the Atlantic Basin peaks on September 10th. While that day has come and gone, and the state’s agricultural interests dodged a bullet in Hurricane Dorian the Atlantic hurricane season does not end until November 30th – making now a good…