Farm & Food File
A syndicated column by Alan Guebert
Archives
Commodity markets see winter thaw, securities markets remain in deep ice
Posted on February 22, 2023
As 2023 searches for a toehold, both the commodities and securities markets continue on the paths plowed for them by last year’s larger-than-expected inflation, Russia’s brutal war, a likely surge in the global pandemic, and a growing power vacuum in American politics.
Securities markets hated 2022’s bad news and most market indices hit yearly highs in […]
Harvested Cattle, Slaughtered Markets
Posted on June 15, 2022
You don’t need to be a vegan to know that livestock and poultry aren’t “harvested,” the squeaky clean verb that’s become fashionable among farm and ranch groups to minimize the end–as in The End–of most animals their members grow.
Soybeans are harvested; pigs are slaughtered. Wheat is harvested; cattle are slaughtered.
It’s not a minor point, insists […]
If futures markets don’t work, your markets won’t work
Posted on May 6, 2022
Contrary to the woeful baying by Big Agbiz, the United States–and any nation with enough money–will not run out of food this year. This can be said without reservation for two reasons.
First, war or no war, there is no global shortage of wheat, the crop today’s Chicken Littles are cluck-cluck clucking about. In the last […]
China’s Buying Binge Continues… Until It Doesn’t
Posted on June 11, 2021
China is even hungrier, richer, and—to the delight of almost every American farmer—more impatient in today’s global food market than anyone thought possible even a decade ago.
In fact, according to the data crunchers at Agricultural Economic Insights (aei), China now imports “about 100 million acres worth of crop production, or roughly 25% of total […]
The Long and Short of It
Posted on March 26, 2020
If you’re a farmer or rancher, you might be in for a bad day when you open your Monday morning email and five of the six headlines sent by an ag news service read:
–“USDA declares Brazilian beef safe, lifts [U.S. import] ban;”
–“GAO launches investigation into Trump aid to farmers;”
–“China could purchase much […]
End of Trade War Looks Like Beginning of Cold War
Posted on November 26, 2019
If China agreed to purchase “$40 to $50 billion” of U.S. farm goods in “the next two years,” as President Donald J. Trump announced Oct. 11, the futures market—where market reality is quickly sorted from political talk—literally wasn’t buying it.
In fact, November soybean futures, the nearby contract, opened Monday, Oct. 14 at $9.405 per bu. and […]
There’s No “Future” In the Futures Market
Posted on September 21, 2016
As the food industry continues to consolidate into fewer, bigger players, the price risk it once hedged in Chicago and New York futures markets is being pushed back onto the very farmers and ranchers it buys from.
The reason is simple: the Big Boys have the market power to do it.
After decades of Big Ag’s talk […]
The Ethanol Trap
Posted on May 1, 2016
March did not go out like either a lion or a lamb. In fact, after the U.S. Department of Agriculture released its Prospective Plantings Report midday March 31, the month—as well as the 2016 corn market—highballed it into history faster than a runaway train.
The coal was USDA’s forecast that farmers intend to plant 93.6 million […]
Free Markets Work, When We Let ‘Em
Posted on April 20, 2016
There is a certain poetry in Sen. Pat Roberts’, R-KS, failure to convince the U.S. Senate to squash state and local food labeling laws. His proposed fix, fail though it did, may have done more to boost consumer faith in the market than anything Congress has or hasn’t done in years.
Roberts’ winning loss began with […]
China Sees Woe, U.S. Ag Sees Red
Posted on February 3, 2016
The fireworks-filled, holiday celebration that is the Chinese New Year doesn’t begin until Feb. 8. Three weeks into calendar year 2016, however, key elements in China’s economy—its wildly speculative stock markets, less-than-transparent currency, sagging heavy industries—have gone boom.
That weakness is already being felt in U.S. farm and ranch country. Rural America, after all, is China’s […]