Thursday, December 18, 2025, 7:05 am

Wednesday was a mostly negative day for our markets.  Spot corn closed up 4, spot soybeans closed down 4 1/2, spot winter wheat closed down 3 1/4 and spot spring wheat closed down 3.  In the overnight trade all of our markets are currently on the positive side.  Oil closed up $0.67 yesterday at $55.94.  It is flat in trading this morning with it now valued at $55.93 per barrel.  Our dollar has traded in a very narrow 10 basis point range over the last 24 hours.  It has stayed between a low of $0.725 US and a high of $0.726 US.  This morning it is currently valued at $0.725 US.

As soybean prices continue to struggle it was interesting to see that a state owned company in China is selling soybeans domestically to reduce their ownership.  These sales are expected to open up storage space for the current purchases that are being made from the US.  As we noted earlier this week at what level these purchases are at is not really known.

Both winter wheat and spring wheat hit new lows on the CBOT yesterday for the current trading month.  As we have recently noted record wheat production in many areas of the world has resulted in increased wheat being available on the export markets.  This increased supply is of course depressing prices.  We should note that Russian bombings at Ukraine ports have stalled their export program but this has not had any positive affect on prices what so ever.  The markets continue to dismiss whatever is happening in the Black Sea region as not market changing news.

One positive that I did not write about for our farmers yesterday was the continued feed demand for both corn and soybeans.  The Quebec feed market imports both of these commodities (especially from Eastern Ontario) and this demand helps to support local basis level.

I saw a very interesting article this morning.  It stated that estimates are that China holds nearly 70% of the global corn reserves and more than 50% of the global wheat reserves.  If they were to liquidate a significant portion of these holdings it would be very negative for prices for sure.  Their government has a policy to stockpile strategic food sources which allows them to possibly be prepared for cataclysmic circumstances that could snarl global supply chains.  Here in North America our countries do not have any of these policies for food.