“The weather has been bad and it has really hampered the ability for the farmer to load trucks,” said James Monger, merchandising manager for Cargill. “It’s hampered trucks being able to drive safely and that’s pulled down inventories in a lot of the processing facilities. As we have a forecast for continued cold those processing facilities need to be able to continue to build inventory, and the way they’re going to have to do that is to pay up in the short term to buy corn, and as we see them pay up, that’s going to provide opportunities for the local farmer.”
That means farmers need to be ready to mobilize to move that grain and take advantage of the premiums, but Monger says “do it safely though. We don’t want people to take unnecessary risks in bad weather, but the market is going to incent you to haul grain over the next week to ten days.”
“But this past fall we had such a variety of harvest dates and such a variety of moistures that even farmers that dry corn on the farm had some issues of putting that corn in space at different levels. And as we start to see temperatures eventually warm this spring, you’re going to have hot spots develop in those bins and lead to blue eyed mold. So we just caution people to really monitor your stocks and make sure that they stay cool, make sure they stay as dry as they can, because that inconsistent input in the bin is going to lead to some quality concerns.”
Monger just relocated to the Lafayette office and spoke to farmers at a Tippecanoe County Farm Bureau outlook breakfast last week. He was not very bullish on the corn market and looks for only a one to two percent switch of corn acres to soybean acres. Hear more in the Hat interview:James Monger