Watching the Wheat Futures Markets

With the USDA Supply and Demand Report being released earlier this week, I visited with Washington State University Economist Dr. Randy Fortenbery and asked what wheat growers should be paying attention to when it comes to the futures markets

Fortenbery: "If I hadn't priced any of my wheat yet from this summer's wheat harvest, right now I think I'd be a little patience. Although if we had 20 or 30 cents maybe 50 cents back into the market, I'd might get a little more aggressive. We're about 40 cents below where we're in middle February in the futures market and I think as long as exports stay relatively attractive we can get back to maybe the $5 September futures price and that might be a time to start thinking again about selling something that I'm harvesting this summer, if I haven't done some selling. If you are thinking about holding off and storing crop into the next winter, usually what has happened to us in the Pacific Northwest is for that to be successful you have to be willing to store all the way to maybe March or April. We usually see a decline in prices through the fall and early winter months so you have to be willing to withstand that as we go forward. One of the real challenges now though — even looking for storage this year —- still is the really large world stocks. As long as those remain as large as those are, then it is going to be difficult for us to increase market share in the world market and that's will be a limiting factor for prices."

Following the release of the USDA Supply and Demand Report, I asked Washington State University Economist Dr. Randy Fortenbery what corn growers should be watching when it comes to the futures market