Commodity Insight: News & Views

The past few months, price movement in the grain complex has been simple to explain. It has been one step forward quickly followed by two steps backward, or vice versa.

Here are some of those steps — in both directions — taken by agriculture, the latest farm industry headline news.

• Farm Journal / AgWeb: “Cash fed cattle eclipse previous record highs.”

• MarketWatch: “Orange juice futures are near a record. Sugar is at an 11-year high. And coffee is peaking, too. What’s going on? ‘Most of the softs sector fall under the category of weather derivatives,’ as weather plays a key role, said Darin Newsom, Barchart senior market analyst.”

• Barron’s: “Gold is near a record high — and the rally might not stop there.”

• Wall Street Journal: “Economists turn more pessimistic on inflation; persistent inflation will keep interest rates elevated and recession risks high, Journal survey finds.”

• The Economist: “America’s economic outperformance is a marvel to behold. … On a whole range of measures, American dominance remains striking. And relative to its rich-world peers, its lead is increasing.”

• Successful Farming: “18,000 dairy cattle killed in Texas fire — An explosion and fire (April 10) at Southfork Dairy Farm southeast of Dimmitt, Texas, resulted in what may be biggest single-incident livestock death toll in history.”

• U.S. Government Accountability Office: “Sticker shock at the grocery store? Inflation wasn’t the only reason food prices increased. … ‘Prices are expected to grow more slowly in 2023 than they did in 2022. But it’s still going to grow more than the historic annual average of 2%,’ said GAO’s Steve Morris, an expert in agriculture, during a recent podcast.”

• The Economist: “Inflation has yet to dent big food’s earnings; fat times for American packaged-foods giants.”

• Reuters: “World could face record temperatures in 2023 as El Niño returns.”

• Bloomberg: “Ukraine grain is snarled again with blockages now on two fronts — Kyiv says Russia blocked inspections of Black Sea grain ships; Hungary, Poland, Slovakia also ban farm imports from Ukraine.”

• CNBC: “Morgan Stanley stock strategist who called the bear market says we are ‘far from out of the woods.’”

• MarketWatch: “Why investing Social Security in the stock market is such a terrible idea.”

• Reuters: “‘Zero capacity to save’: Argentines buckle as inflation tops 104% — Argentina’s annual inflation rate soared to 104.3% in March, the official statistics agency said (on April 14), one of the highest rates in the world, straining people’s wallets and stoking a cost-of-living crisis that has pushed up poverty.”

• Severe Weather Europe: “El Niño watch has been issued by NOAA, with large-scale atmospheric and oceanic changes now being detected as we head for the next ENSO phase. … This means that El Niño is starting to develop, bringing worldwide weather impacts in the second half of the year and especially over next winter.”

• AgResource Company: “The rapid onset of El Niño might prevent U.S. corn and soybean yields from reaching trend-line yields in 2023. However, the Plains drought looks to deepen and spread east with time.”

• AgriNews / Commodity Insight: “My rallying cry for the months ahead is to the point and clearly bullish. I am saying loud and clear, ‘as China goes, so go commodities.’”

• Reuters: “China Q1 GDP rises faster than expected after COVID curbs end.”

• Business Insider: “The IMF said China will be the largest driver of global economic growth in the next five years.”

• Bloomberg: “Americans go deeper into debt as they use buy-now, pay-later apps for groceries — With inflation squeezing budgets, more consumers are turning to instant credit apps to make ends meet.”

• CNBC: “Fed’s Bostic sees one more quarter-point rate hike, then a hold ‘for quite some time.’”

• Viewpoints of a Commodity Trader / Roy W. Longstreet: “The greatest loss is not money, but the loss of self-confidence.”

• CNBC: “Global rice shortage is set to be the biggest in 20 years.”

• Dow Jones Newswires: “The flow of money into the commodities market hit a record high, just slightly beating flows last seen in 2012, according to JPMorgan Global Commodities Research in a note. … The inflow of money is ‘record strong,’ according to JPMorgan, beating records set in 2012 and well exceeding last year’s performance.”