Katie Geerdes

Grain traders have their attention shifted onto the May 14-15 meeting between President Trump and President Xi Jinping in China. While Tuesday's crop report will help shape short-term market direction along with war and weather, the outcome of the China summit may ultimately prove more critical for soybean prices. That the meeting would even take place is viewed as significant after the initial trip was postponed from late April because of the outbreak of war with Iran. Reports of U.S. military transport aircraft arriving in Beijing ahead of the visit indicated that preparations were underway and that the meeting will likely proceed as planned. Simply holding the meeting would be viewed as a constructive first step toward normalizing trade relations with China. Still, traders will judge the market impact by what tangible agreements could emerge. Markets were poised to reflect what wins out among the good, bad, and ugly possibilities surrounding U.S.-China trade negotiations.   This week's headlines commonly mentioned a "memo of understanding" that outlined details for ending the war with Iran. The possibility of another memo of understanding was being brought up for handling Chinese soybean purchases that could be made in advance of next week's meeting. China…

Part 2 of 3 In going through my office records when cleaning out my desk, I came across a number of things that brought back memories. I will share my nostalgia of the ethanol industry in this report.   The battle for ethanol goes back further than most remember and before my time. It was alleged to be a fight between Henry Ford who made Model Ts that ran on ethanol and J.D. Rockefeller who used Prohibition to eventually force automakers to make engines that used gasoline instead. It's easy to see why Rockefeller is so easily blamed: he and his wife became proponents of the Temperance movement to cut U.S. alcohol consumption, which ultimately led to the period of Prohibition from 1920 to 1933. The real thing that had prevented ethanol from becoming a fuel source were alcohol taxes. That was remedied by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1906 with the passage of the Free Alcohol bill.   ******   I used to read the funny paper section of the Des Moines Register and I kept the issue from Sunday July 8th 2006 in a drawer in my desk. It was the lead cartoon and it shows that they did…

While temperatures remain cool to start the month of May, fields have had time to dry out allowing planting pace to accelerate.  As stated previously, there is no significant precipitation seen north of I-80 this week.  Heavy precipitation is seen falling in Missouri, Southern Illinois and Southern Indiana and most of Ohio.  Next week precipitation comes back to Minnesota and North Dakota but leaves Iowa and Northern Illinois mostly dry again despite for small pockets of scattered showers.   We finished planting corn on our farm May 1st.  I suspect those growers in Western Iowa that got an early start will already begin finishing this week.  US Corn planting pace reached 38% through last week, 4% above its historical average.  Over half of the US corn crop will be planted by this weekend.  Soybean planting is 33% complete, 10% above its historical average.  If we keep this up, we might have to adjust for a higher bean yield.   Temperatures continue to be the limiting factor as they remain 4 to 6 degrees below their average for this week.  As we progress through the month, they should reach their trendline temperatures at least for the Western Corn Belt by May…

Part 1 of 3 The picture below is of the FS blender's pump that I filled my tank from Tuesday 4/28. I drive a Dodge Ram with a hemi-engine and use E-30. It is my second truck using E-30 after having put on well over 200,000 miles on the first with no engine trouble. The average price of gas was over $4 gallon nationally that day but locally E10 was still priced at $3.649 gallon in Spencer Iowa on its way higher. I bought E-30 for $2.999 gallon saving 65 cents a gallon compared to E-10. I am confused as to why consumers would not do that. Farmers, in particular, should be wise to the best choice of fuel blend. Why waste money? My truck holds 24 gallons or so when I fill up so that is $15.60 savings per tank...enough for McDonalds (or used to be). The current pricing advantage for E-30 was not the result of the war…as it has been there the whole time.   E-10 replaced MTBE poison as a gasoline additive, it is an oxygenate, reduces smog and has higher octane. All of the physical benefits of ethanol are retained with higher blends but the…

President Trump said that 'he was not satisfied' with the latest Iranian proposal to end the war. That is not surprising as there was no capitulation from them in it. He also says that negotiations are making great progress. That I do not believe. His latest plan to guide rather than escort neutral parties through the Strait, Project Freedom, lacks the required definition of the distinctive difference between the two…as to guiding versus escorting. As of this writing, Iran has not yet bought into it. In fact, quite the opposite as they were reportedly instigating new attacks. As commercial ships moved to attempt to take advantage of being quidded out, Iran struck the UAE and ships with drones attempting to foil the effort to escape. Watch your news-feed for updates. The President previously lamented that negotiations were struggling as they had killed the original set of Iranian leaders that they had been talking to. The evidence is that there is new top-level leadership functioning as well as a mosaic military command structure that acts independently but also follows orders. While the President told Congress otherwise, there is definitely a war going on around the Persian Gulf. The White House says…

With help from crude oil prices pushing back above $100 per barrel, grain futures were strengthening toward critical chart levels that included $5 per bushel for corn, $12 for soybeans, and $7 for wheat. The cattle market was similarly benefitting from the additional flow of funds into commodities and traders were trying to determine if futures were lacking the momentum to sustain new all-time highs. The chances for a continued commodity sector breakout were left to depend on the weekend developments with Iran and whether it would become 10 straight Sundays of crude oil futures opening higher.   There were evidently a lot of orders stacked up right under $5 for December corn futures, with the session high reaching $4.99 3/4 on Thursday. Friday's trade poked above $5 but settled under it. This was the highest level for the December 2026 corn contract since 2023. Some farmers were selling the new-crop with last year in mind, both because current prices were higher and because many still had ample old-crop corn stocks left over. On May 1st last year, the December 2025 corn futures traded up to a high of $4.49 3/4. That contract never reached above $5 in 2025, having…

The last 5-year Farm Bill that Congress enacted was in 2018 and since 2023 they have been extending the bill annually as they could not agree on a new one. Republicans control Congress and they want to say they passed a fresh Farm Bill in case they lose control of the House in the fall mid-term election. The White House and Congressional leadership would like a Farm Bill to tout on the campaign trail. The GOP has just a tiny House majority and it will take bi-partisan cooperation to pass a bill. That has always been the case.   The Farm Bill has always been a product of compromise. Democrats typically called it a food bill for the benefits it contained for consumers and accounted for the largest amount of the spending while Republicans typically supported the farm subsidies that directly benefited farmers. The result was that both sides got what they wanted for conceding to what the other side wanted as well. If either side refused to concede to the other, there was no Farm Bill. To keep the wheels from flying off they would extend any current bill. That extended whatever programs were on auto-pilot but didn't allow…

We started out the week with additional precipitation in the Eastern Corn Belt while South Dakota and Nebraska are hit or miss.  Bulls believe there is too much precipitation delaying planting, while Bears point out that the worst drought areas have been eliminated.   Areas in and around Wisconsin and Michigan have had the wettest March-April period ever recorded!  Meanwhile, the Southeast US and western edges of Nebraska and South Dakota experienced some of their driest on record.  Central and Western Iowa are sort of in the middle, with adequate showers keeping things wet but still allowing for fieldwork.  The US grain area in drought has been cut in half since March, and it continues getting smaller.   In NW Iowa, we finished planting our soybeans and half of our corn by April 22nd.  We have one more field to go but might not get to it until later this week.  There is no rush.  The forecast through May 5th now shows a drying pattern for the majority of the Corn Belt.  This will give time for fields to dry out and help to advance planting.  Areas of Missouri and Illinois need a break from the rain.  We don’t see significant…

Every day that the Strait of Hormuz remains closed, the balance sheet of global oil supply/demand deteriorates a little further. It has now passed the point of concern to where it is becoming a major crisis. 20% of the world's oil/gas moved through the Strait but there are some alternatives such as pipelines that were underutilized, latent production capacity elsewhere from the Mid-East that could be brought on-line as well as reserve stocks that could fill a temporary shortage of supply that gets users by for a while before the real crunch hits. The alternative transportation routes and reserve supplies initially reduce the shortage to near 9% but that grows as strategic reserves are exhausted and the flow of commodities from the Gulf is not restored. There was an initial assumption based primarily on president Trumps assertions that the supply shortfall would be a relatively brief disruption that is now morphing into the reality that he was wrong and it is protracting. The replacement cost of barrel of oil will rise further. The supply shortfall is not evenly distributed between countries. China got 80% of its oil through the strait, Japan 93% and South Korea 70% plus 20% of its…

I have expressed concern for the President and the President's family's well-being in this report before… primarily in regard to Iran. There have been 3 lone-wolf attempts on his life (that we know of) and only the one in Pennsylvania, where there was a major security breach and a tragic loss of life, was life-threatening to the President. These attempts were directed at him. I was first focused on whether there was an Iranian connection to the weekend shooting at the Correspondents' Dinner. There did not appear to be. It had less than a zero chance of success. Such an attempt from Iran would be better resourced and executed. Reportedly, there were 5 of the top 6 in the line of succession to the president there which made it an extremely target-rich environment. After all, congregating top leaders in one place was how Israel was able to kill so many Iranian leaders. Only the President pro-team of the US Senate, Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley, 4th in line of succession was not there. Hopefully, better precautions will be taken. Administration security attention has turned more toward drones. Trump administration officials have become targets. My greatest concern is most focused on the…