Weather ---- Another nice day of slow rain Monday sandwiched in-between a south wind and a north wind. Tractors working hard to get back in the field.... assuming the expensive fertilizer becomes available...... no one worries about regulation of monopoly profit potential.
futures
Cattle plump shopper pens. 120.025 Up. 1.125.
shapely young spring break cattle headed to full feed. 145.475 Up 0.375
Cattle have slipped futures wise since last weeks high numbers .... If you got some sold enjoy and look for a support price to buy back in a range based trade that is still in ranges that were not damaged by more expensive feed costs.
Grains
Corn @ 5.494 down 01.6
Wheat @ 5.776 down another. 4.2
Beans @ 14.244. up 1.4
Cotton @ 82.24 Down 1.29
Natural gas is a low $2.552 per McF. up. 0.15
Crude oil 57.91 . down 0.48
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Grains are off a little from last weeks high but not enough to consider any sign of a change in trend upward. Looking for range parameters yet the trend is still positive. Especially in beans but also in corn which is still within a few cents of the new top placed a week ago. With every passing week we become more comfortable with this new level and the support it has. Fertilizer retailers seem to be betting on good prices for some time.
Cotton has lost momentum and lost several cents from former highs. Possibly a direct result of China's concentration on US Corn this last week.
I have been reading about the move of tech companies out of California to states with stronger economies. The rats flee. But in the pile I spotted some discussion of agriculture issues faced as well. The pull on elderly water systems has been extreme in drought years which have been prominent in the western US for at least ten years. In the sw drought has been an issue since 2010..... with 2011 and 12 being extreme. California became very dependent on groundwater for irrigation as the reservoir system struggled to keep up and was taxed for municipal expansion. Now they are experiencing large scale sinking of ground levels in some areas. etc etc........ I have seen this...... as you displace water from a sand of gravel formation the ground compacts.....
The general economy and our "fun with peak production" may have a lot of indicators that we are not holding altitude in out flight deliver food,......................or maybe I been watching to many air disaster shows on TV. As I hide my pilots license.
SW
