Now that the U.S. harvest is over Chicago grain traders have turned their attention to South America where farmers are busy planting corn and soybeans.
    Argentina and Brazil toppled the United States a few years ago as the top exporters of soybeans, representing 49 percent of the world’s soy trade this past season versus the United States at 40 percent. But Brazilian plantings are expected to be down this year as credit pressures are deterring farmers from planting more.
    The world grain trade is counting on South America to produce big soybean crops this season — taking up some of the slack from the United States where soy stocks have slipped to historically low levels given strong demand and a short crop in 2007.
    Dryness in Argentina raised crop concerns and underpinned Chicago Board of Trade grain and oilseed prices early last week. But as the No. 3 soy exporter saw scattered rains, worries eased and the focus turned to southern Brazil.
    Parana and Rio Grande do Sul, the second and third largest Brazilian soy states, are the driest. Both are expected to see light, scattered showers by Tuesday.
    “That rain next week is going to be an important event,” said Mike Palmerino, DTN Meteorlogix forecaster.
    While South America needs rain, Australia is for once struggling with too much. Farmers are trying to put away this year’s wheat crop but constant rains have stalled their efforts and likely reducing the quality of the crop.
    More poor quality wheat will only add to already big global supplies of feed wheat, which is cutting into demand for U.S. corn. Export sales of corn have been under 500,000 tonnes for the past five weeks and off to their slowest pace since 2002. U.S. corn exports last season totaled nearly 62 million tonnes, or 65 percent of the global corn exports.
    The final U.S. government supply-and-demand report of the year will be issued on Dec. 11, with many analysts expecting USDA to shave its 2008/09 U.S. corn export figure to reflect the slowed pace. But traders will have to wait until USDA’s Jan. 12 crop report for final 2008 production numbers.
    While the supply outlook is having a little more play on CBOT prices, the global economic slowdown is hurting employment and food spending and will undoubtedly continue to loom over the markets.
    Grains and oilseeds have traded sideways for weeks as investors moved to the sidelines, unwilling to take on fresh  positions. Cash grain traders are also still finding it tough to finance purchases from farmers amid continued tight or frozen credit markets.
    “We are in the de-leveraging process,” one CBOT cash-connected trader said this week. “No reason to think that will change before year’s end, especially as the markets move into their annual slow holiday period.”
    But grain traders in the coming week will still keep an eye on Wall Street for economic signs.
    Weekend retail sales following the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday, typically the biggest shopping period of the year will be one key economic indicator. More critical will be the government’s November jobs report, issued on Friday, which will likely provide more evidence of a deep economic downturn and possible additional interest rate cuts, which grain traders always welcome.

PHOTO: U.S. corn harvest wrapped up for 2008. Corn field in southern Wisconsin taken Nov. 29 by Chris Stebbins.

The United States could feed more hungry people around the world by reforming its convoluted foreign aid system, a coalition of aid groups said on Monday.
The groups called on President-Elect Barack Obama to create an agency to take charge and accountability for aid, and handed out this convoluted chart from Brookings Institute to make their point.

The chart links the departments, agencies and government offices that have a role in aid policy and programs — the grey and blue boxes on the right — with 50 foreign aid objectives (in green) and the laws and initiatives behind them (in yellow and red.)
(Click on this link if you really want to connect the dots. )
Aid organizations also want freer trade, fewer subsidies, and more flexibility to buy food aid closer to where it’s needed, rather than being required to ship U.S. crops overseas, said David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World. And they have friends in high places who may spur reforms, he said.
Obama, Vice-President-Elect Joe Biden, and Secretary of State-in-waiting Hillary Clinton all have strong foreign aid creds, as do Timothy Geithner, Obama’s choice for treasury secretary, and Lawrence Summers, new head of the National Economic Council, Beckmann said.
Several members of the Modernizing Foreign Assistance Network are advising the president-elect, Beckmann noted, including Gayle Smith, Larry Nowels, and Brookings’ Lael Brainard, who created the spider web chart shown here.
Brainard has been touted as a possible candidate for U.S. Trade Representative.

By the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday the American corn and soy harvest is usually wrapped. But as of last week, farmers still had more than  two billion bushels of corn sitting in the field, or more than 15 percent of this year’s projected output of 12 billion bushels. 
    The U.S. Department of Agriculture will release its next crop progress report of the year on Monday afternoon after the close of trading. That will give the U.S. grain industry a better idea of how much corn is left to harvest at the onset of winter. 
    Corn is usually left to harvest after soybeans, so the mature crop can dry in the winds and bring kernel moisture down to the 15.5 percent levels that commercial elevators demand. This way farmers avoid “docking” charges and don’t have to pay to dry the grain themselves. 
    But due to late planting and other weather events this season like record flooding in the Midwest, many farmers have had to wait for maturity — too late, in some places like the Dakotas which are already seeing corn covered in snow. Those fields won’t be harvested until spring and the farmers are facing potential “lodging,” or downed corn, and other yield losses from the exposure.
    “To think losses are not going to be there to some degree would be naive,”  analyst Don Roose at U.S. Commodities in West Des Moines, Iowa, said this week. 
    The grain trade will not know the final output numbers until mid-January when USDA issues its annual final assessment . But most traders are anticipating the government to trim its corn production number at that time, and possibly later. 
    Despite this supportive uncertainty about final yields, corn prices slipped to one-year lows this week as demand questions outweighed supply.  Curtailment in demand amid the deepening global recession and fears of counter-party risk kept cash sales limited.  
    Corn exporters are also feeling the effects a huge supply of global feed wheat for sale and the ailing ethanol industry is limiting its purchases of corn, CBOT traders noted. 
    On Friday, the largest publicly traded U.S. ethanol prouder, VeraSun, said it had stopped receiving and processing corn at “certain” of its plants while it seeks additional financing.
    Wheat and soybeans were also under pressure last week. But there is still a sense on the trading floor that the grain markets may be bottoming. But for that to happen the stock markets need to start stabilizing, traders said. 
    The sharp reaction rally on Wall Street late on Friday to news from the Obama campaign that New York Fed President Tim Geithner will become Treasury Secretary was a positive. Obama is due to introduce his economic team on Monday. On Saturday in a radio address Obama laid out plans for a massive two-year economic stimulus package.
    So if confidence begins to be rekindled on Wall Street from even just high expectations for the next administration, the positive vibes could easily carry over into other credit-dependent commerce like grains.
    So while the direction of the Dow and crude oil will be watched, grain traders will be focused on the dollar and on cash demand in the CIF barge and FOB export markets in the coming week, which will be shortened by the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday market closure on Thursday. The week of Thanksgiving tends to be lighter volume which could at times lead to more market volatility. 
     
    Reports to watch: 
    * The CBOT options report issued over the weekend listing the number of wheat and corn options exercised over the weekend. 
    On Friday, selling in corn escalated when the December contract <CZ8> fell below $3.50, forcing traders holding Dec puts in the $3.30 to $3.40 strike range to cover on the last day and expiration of Dec options. 
    Preliminary trade data from Friday posted on CME web site  http://www.cmegroup.com/tools-information/build-a-report.html?report=dailybulletin on Sunday morning showed tens of thousands of put options were exercised this weekend. That may impact Sunday night or Monday morning trade. 
    * USDA’s crop progress report on Monday. 
    * U.S. Census Bureau October crush data on Wednesday.

Numbers, or rather the lack of them, are the latest gripe of Argentina’s disgruntled farm sector.

Statistics published by the government for years have been disappearing since the Agriculture Secretariat ceded control of the country’s multibillion-dollar grains and beef trade to another state agency, the ONCCA, earlier this year.

Little by little, the government has stopped updating routine tables detailing weekly grains export commitments and purchases by soy crushers. Weekly corn and wheat sales, with details of buyer countries, have not been published since June.

Some new information has been posted in its place, but it smells like a conspiracy to grains exporters, meatpackers and farmers, whose relationship with the center-left government of President Cristina Fernandez seems irreparably damaged following this year’s messy conflict over soy taxes.

“The ONCCA is trying to hide its errors by withholding information … Distorting, restricting or delaying publication is a grave shortcoming that conspires against the country’s development,” meatpackers’ chamber CICCRA said in an unusually strong-worded statement this week.

Such criticism has been swiftly rebutted by ONCCA chief Ricardo Etchegaray, a former head of customs described as a long-time ally of the president and her powerful husband, ex-President Nestor Kirchner.

“Since we started work in this office, we’ve been dedicated to bringing greater transparency to the agriculture trade,” the agency said in a statement earlier this month.

The ONCCA does publish some grains export information, and has added new details related to safeguarding domestic supplies, but critics say new systems mean the data cannot be compared to past statistics and key details have been lost.

It is not the only government agency to alter or cut back on the information it publishes.A spokeswoman for the ONCCA said technical problems this week had hampered plans to post some of the missing numbers on the agency’s website.

The longer it takes, the more the industry will complain that numbers are being used as a political weapon.

The Bush administration could take advantage of falling oil prices and plummeting fuel demand to replenish millions of barrels of crude into the U.S. emergency petroleum stockpile.
The Energy Department is sitting on a hefty $584 million it raised from selling 11 million barrels of crude to refiners from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in 2005 after Hurricane Katrina laid waste to the country’s energy infrastructure.  The department wanted to replace the sold barrels, but balked at the cost as the oil price marched relentlessly higher, hitting a record above $147 a barrel in July.
But with a weak economy, crude costs have fallen by more than half to $55 a barrel this week. That is close to the same price the Energy Department sold those 11 million barrels of oil three years ago.
If the department doesn’t use the cash in its piggybank before the Bush administration comes to an end on Jan. 20 some lawmakers want the new Obama administration to use the money to promote alternative energy.
The Energy Department said it is “examining and analyzing” the idea of buying oil for the stockpile now that prices have fallen, but no decision has been made.
Guy Caruso, the former head of the department’s Energy Information Administration who now works at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said buying the oil back  at a delivery rate of 100,000 barrels a day for three and half months would have little market impact and not raise prices.
“With demand being down now, there’s a lot more excess  production capacity. I think producers would love to have a new customer,” Caruso told Reuters. “I think now is an excellent time to do it, unless you’re thinking wait a couple of months and it might be lower,” he added.
The U.S. emergency oil reserve, created by Congress in 1975 after the Arab oil embargo, holds 702 million barrels of crude, but has room for 727 million barrels. The department plans to add 7.7 million barrels of oil to the stockpile from January through May of next year, which would return barrels loaned to refiners this summer when Hurricanes Gustav and Ike disrupted supplies. 

– Tom Doggett

With the U.S. Agriculture Department’s last production report of the year now out of the way and the North American harvest nearing completion, grain traders are turning their attention to the demand for grains and oilseeds as the key driver for Chicago Board of Trade prices.
    Given the still uncertain scope of the global credit meltdown and with bullish news in short supply, CBOT grains will likely feel the weight of limited demand, traders say. The inconclusive G20 “summit” over the weekend which featured promises but few specifics typifies the uncertain mood.
    Money — specifically, credit — makes the world go round for grain traders, as with all other market makers. But the giant credit freeze seems nowhere close to thawing out.
    A long-time CBOT grain broker told a reporter on Friday that one of his clients sold a couple of barges of grain late in the week. But he added that while there was more interest for U.S. grains, the seller was hesitant to extend additional credit until he had been paid for the other barges.
    “There is just the underlying concern about counter-party risk,” he said, “and it’s happening everywhere.”
    However, there was also a sense as the CBOT grain markets closed on Friday that they were finally beginning to “de-link” themselves a bit from roiling, outside financial markets.
    Soybean futures ended lower for the week but both corn and wheat ended higher even as Wall Street street stocks posted another week of losses, with the Dow falling 5 percent.
    The week ahead could be another struggle for the stock market as hopes for bailout of the auto industry fade before President George W. Bush leaves office.
    The low expectations for the G20 world leaders meeting in Washington this weekend were also confirmed amid the worst financial crisis in 80 years.
    So CBOT grain traders will look for some carry-over effects for at least corn and wheat starting on Sunday night and into day trading on Monday to see if fundamental grain demand will start showing its hand and underpinning the board.
    One thing for certain: Chicago Board of Trade corn options trade will be interesting in the coming week and potentially volatile given the huge open interest in December options.
    “There are over 1.2 million Dec options open that are going to expire on November 21,” Patrick Quaid, a corn options floor trader, noted on Friday.
    USDA will issue its weekly crop progress after Monday’s close, with traders expecting corn harvest at least 80 percent done, trailing the average pace of 90 percent by mid-November.
    Time is running out for harvest with the week ahead one of the last clear windows to wrap it up. North Dakota’s crop report last week said some farmers do not expect to get back into fields to harvest until spring as recent snows pretty much put an end to their efforts.
    Sunday saw some scattered light snow in the Chicago area.
    The lateness of harvest continues to feed some talk that USDA will cut its final 2008 U.S. corn production total in January. This past week, USDA trimmed both its U.S. corn and soybean output estimates to reflect smaller expected yields.
    A sidelines event last week in Chicago also gave traders another wild card to worry about in the coming year.
    At the annual Futures Industry Association meeting, the tone of the discussions was more sobering than in past years as “derivatives” has become a term of derision during the world financial crisis — even if OTC and other unregulated private markets rather than exchanged-cleared contracts have been in the cross-hairs of critics.
    But one fact FIA attendees agreed on: more regulation and oversight is coming, a message underscored by comments from the outgoing CFTC chairman at the start of the FIA’s meeting:
    “The United States should scrap the current outdated … framework,” said Walter Lukken, acting chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
    “If any opportunity and time would allow us to do this, this is the time,” Lukken said. “We should think boldly.”

This week begins with a fresh crop report from the U.S. government. USDA on Monday will update its latest U.S. and global supply-and-demand figures, featuring new 2008 American corn and soybean output numbers.
    The report comes on the heels of the agency’s unprecedented correction of its Oct. 10 crop report nearly two weeks ago when it found in error its acreage forecasts — cutting one million harvested acres off of both corn and soy.
    The general feeling is that USDA will raise its corn production and ending stocks projections to reflect strong harvest yields. In contrast, soy output and supply estimates will likely be lowered due to disappointing crop yields.
    World and U.S. wheat supply forecasts were seen dropping because of dry growing conditions in Argentina and Australia and a better-than-expected export pace for U.S. wheat.
    “After the report we’ll watch the outside markets, especially the energies which have a large influence over the grains,” one cash-connected CBOT trader said.
    The outside markets dominated the moves in CBOT grains and oilseeds last week. All slipped on signs of a deepening global recession. The Dow industrials fell 4 percent to end below the 9,000-mark. Crude oil sank $6 on the week, closing Friday at $61 a barrel after hitting a 19-month low the day before of $60.16 due to easing demand.
    It was a week with plenty of news, including the election of a new U.S. president and the worst jobless rate in more than 14 years.
    That brought added volatility to the Dow industrials, with CBOT markets tagging along. The Dow saw its biggest Election Day rally in history on Tuesday as investors savored the end of uncertainty surrounding the presidential election, followed by stocks having their worst two-day slide since October 1987.
    Within CBOT markets, soybeans held up the best, falling just 1 percent compared to corn which was down more than 6 percent and wheat 3 percent lower.
    China’s voracious appetite for U.S. soybeans and a lack of farmer sales supported CBOT soy markets. Corn, on the other hand, is seeing mediocre demand given the ailing ethanol industry and stymied export sales.
    Undoubtedly, CBOT markets will be driven by the economic landscape in the week ahead while waiting with bated breath for President-elect Barack Obama’s pick for U.S. Treasury secretary.

    Environmentalists have long disparaged the evils of hydroelectric dams in Brazil: they flood large swaths of forest, displace indigenous groups and wildlife, increase water evaporation and salination, as well as emit methane from decaying submerged forests — a particularly bad greenhouse gas.
    But, while it hardly deserves consideration in the more important environmental debate, hydroelectric reservoirs are a fantastic resource for the sports fisherman and the beautiful and aggressive tucunare, more widely known as the peacock bass.
    Seven varieties of the colorful fish, which is really a cichlid and not a bass, inhabit the waterways of Latin America’s tropical and subtropical zones. Several large-scale sport fishing outfitters cater to American, Japanese and European fishermen, bringing them to remote tributaries on the Amazon. But these trips are logistically difficult, often involving a complex combination of planes, taxis and boats. They also often run several thousand dollars for a week.
    But fishing on the reservoirs along several of waterways outside of the Amazon region and only a few hours drive from Sao Paulo or Rio de Janeiro are much cheaper and less complicated, while still offering many exciting hits.
    The fish, also known in Portuguese as pavao - peacock because of the big eye-like dot on its tail to confuse predators, thrives in the warm fresh waters of the reservoirs, which are fecund with surrounding plant and animal life. The tucunare grow to more than 20 lbs (10kg) in some cases, feeding on young piranha and other fish. They are super aggressive and an superb sport fish. If you don’t enjoy fishing peacock bass, you probably aren’t made out for the sport.

-- John Kemp is a Reuters columnist.  The views expressed are his own --

By John Kemp

LONDON (Reuters) - By driving up long-term real interest rates, the forthcoming flood of U.S Treasury borrowing threatens to crowd out the amount of capital for investing in other asset classes, creating a much tougher environment for commodity prices over the next two to three years.

Like many other asset classes, commodity prices have benefited from an influx of funds in recent years driven by three related factors:

(1)  The long-term downtrend in inflation, greater macroeconomic stability, and heightened confidence in fiscal and monetary policy since the early 1980s have resulted in a steady reduction in both nominal and inflation-adjusted interest rates. Real rates are down from +8.0 percent in 1984 and +4.5 percent at the start of 1995 to -0.5 percent in H1 2008, or +1.5 percent if rising food and energy costs are excluded (see chart https://customers.reuters.com/d/graphics/US_RLINT1108.gif).

As real returns on benchmark government bonds have shrunk, investors have shifted into higher risk asset classes (equities, hedge funds, private equity and commodities) in search of better returns.

(2)  Current account surpluses from China's export-related boom and OPEC's torrent of petrodollar revenues have been smoothly recycled back into debt markets, private equity, hedge funds and other instruments in North America and Western Europe.

China's surplus savings and proceeds from foreign exchange intervention, coupled with the windfall revenues from higher oil and commodity prices in the Middle East, have been neatly matched by the willingness of households and firms in the United States, Europe and the Anglo-Saxon economies to borrow and spend.

The result was an unusually long period of synchronized but mostly non-inflationary growth in the major economies of North America, Western Europe, Japan and the rest of Asia between 2003 and 2007, with strong inflationary pressures only becoming explicit toward the end of the period.

(3)  Smaller cyclical variations and the financial system's ability to bounce back quickly after the Asian financial crisis (1997), LTCM (1998), the collapse of the dotcom boom (2000-01), Enron (2001) and the attacks on the World Trade Centre and Pentagon (2001) seem to have made investors more confident and increased appetite for taking on more apparent risk in search of higher returns.

Tolerance for short-term volatility has increased as investors have focused on projected long-term capital growth. The existence of a "Greenspan put" on equity and other higher-risk asset prices has seemed to limit extreme downside risks. Coupled with the apparent protection from portfolio diversification, it has resulted in both retail and private investors shifting their portfolios to contain a much greater proportion of higher-risk assets.

The result of these three factors was an unusually long period of sustained growth, with low inflation and low long-term interest rates lasting almost five years from 2003-2008.

Former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan described the failure of long-term rates to rise significantly even as the Fed began to normalize short-term rates from June 2004 onwards as a "conundrum". While long rates did start to rise from late 2005 onwards, the rise was nowhere near what would have been anticipated given the sharp escalation in inflation, much of it driven by rising commodity prices. Real interest rates slid to the lowest levels in more than twenty years.

Falling real rates diverted a huge flow of investment funds away from the core financial markets (government bonds and equities in North America and Western Europe) towards higher-risk but higher-yielding instruments (emerging market equities, commodities, real estate, structured mortgage products) and encouraged the use of more leverage to boost returns further.  The result was a broad inflation of a wide range of asset prices from real estate to emerging market stock indices and fine art.

Commodities were slower to benefit than some other assets. But once the excess capacity inherited from the 1990s had been absorbed, commodity prices began to rise explosively from 2004 onwards.

The conundrum has supported commodity prices in two ways: (a) providing an unusually long period of sustained growth and giving central banks comfort to tolerate rapid expansion despite the emergence of obvious capacity pressures; and (b) stimulating the large-scale flow of funds from lower-risk bond markets towards commodity indices and actively managed commodity hedge funds in search of higher returns. The first might be termed the "real" transmission channel, the second the "financial" one.

But in the wake of the financial crisis, the conundrum threatens to go into reverse, creating a much more hostile environment:

(1)  The U.S Treasury's forthcoming flood of debt issues threatens to drive up long-term interest rates. The volume of funds the Treasury needs to borrow within twelve months has doubled from $1.5 trillion in Oct 2006 to more than $3.0 trillion in Oct 2008. For the time being, the Treasury can take advantage of strong safe haven flows to issue short-term securities at yields below 1 percent. But the appetite for longer-dated paper is untested.

Officials have spoken about reintroducing three-year notes - suggesting investors are comfortable with inflation and devaluation risks over the next 12-18 months but more uncertain about the outlook beyond that timeframe. Nominal rates on benchmark ten-year paper have not fallen significantly since the onset of the crisis, even as inflation has abated, suggesting the market is now demanding much higher real rates.

(2)  Sharp falls in commodity prices and slowing export growth will cut the volume of petrodollars and foreign exchange accumulation that needs to be recycled into U.S and European asset markets.

(3)  Increased volatility is curbing appetite for risk, especially among sovereign, institutional and retail investors, or at least fuelling demands for better compensation in terms of higher dividends, coupons and steep discounts on new issues. Appetite for mortgage-backed securities has largely evaporated, while credit spreads on even mid-grade corporate debt have surged.

This new environment will have a negative impact on commodity markets through both real and financial mechanisms.

The Treasury's massive borrowing programme, coupled with lower appetite for risk and wider spreads, will substantially raise real debt costs and intensify the slowdown in corporate investment, construction activity and household consumption over the next two years.

The downturn which began in the U.S construction sector in mid-2006 is now spreading to other sectors (commercial construction, manufacturing and services) and internationally (to Europe, Japan, China and Australasia). Consumption of crude oil products has been falling in the United States for almost a year and the downturn is now spreading to steel, aluminium, nickel and other construction materials.

On the financial side, higher real rates and a reduced appetite for risk looks set to pull investment funds back from the periphery of the financial system (emerging markets, commodities, junk paper) and back towards the core (government bonds and blue chip equities in North America, Western Europe and Japan). The general reduction in investable funds as recycling flows diminish will amplify the trend.

As Greenspan's conundrum reverses, the virtuous circle of strong growth, low interest rates and strongly rising asset markets threatens to unwind. Commodity prices will still draw support from rising long term demand, higher costs, and greater industry consolidation.  But the market faces strong headwinds over the next 2-3 years as rising debt issues and real interest rates crowd out other investment and consumption spending, and reduce the attractiveness of assets on the periphery of the financial markets.

(You can reach John Kemp at john.kemp@thomsonreuters.com)

Once again moves in Chicago Board of Trade grain markets last week were affected by global economic factors, strengthening as moves by central banks and governments to ease credit strains by cutting interest rates began to bear fruit as volatility subsided a little. 
    Financial markets rebounded some. The Dow industrials up 7 percent for the week — exactly the same rise seen in CBOT corn and soybeans. Chicago wheat was up 4 percent.
    CBOT grains markets will undoubtedly mimic the moves in the financials again during the coming week, with both commodity and stock markets driven by macro economic forces and recession views.
    The number 1 event and market mover will be the U.S. presidential election on Tuesday. I haven’t talked to anyone on the trading floor, anywhere for that matter, that is not welcoming Tuesday. After more than two years of political speeches, bantering and heated discussions, it’s time for a decision.
    Key domestic government data released next week includes unemployment figures out on Friday. Reports are expected to show that U.S. nonfarm payrolls shed some 200,000 jobs in October, according to a Reuters poll, while the unemployment rate is forecast to rise 6.3 percent. After the Fed last week cut interest rates by a half point, as expected, further evidence of economic weakness will fuel sentiment for more cuts to buoy the economy. Cheaper money is always supportive for commodity traders.
    Specific to the grain markets will be harvest progress and early analysts’ estimates of what they think the U.S. government on Nov. 10 will project the size of the 2008 American corn and soy crops. Those numbers should be especially interesting given USDA’s latest blunder in crop reporting.
    USDA on Tuesday issued its “oops” update to the Oct. 10 corn and soybean acreage numbers — cutting both by 1.0 million acres after the agency discovered an error due to a suspected computer glitch.
    “I do not know of another time we have corrected a crop report” in mid-month, said Carol House, head of the Agricultural Statistics Board.
    As far as yields, the general sentiment is that soybeans continue to be disappointing while corn is coming in at or above expectations. Currently, USDA is forecasting the soy yields to average 39.5 bushels per acre nationally and corn just under 154 bpa.
    Weekend weather across the Midwest has been nearly perfect for harvest. That was just what farmers ordered as they were running about two weeks behind in getting crops tucked away for winter.
    Traders expect USDA late Monday to report a big jump in harvest progress from last week when only 39 percent of the corn crop was harvested. By early November, typically 80 percent of the corn harvest is complete. Most of the soybean crop should be off the field.