Tuesday, March 18, 2025, 7:25 a.m.

Monday was a positive day for our markets.  Harvest corn closed up 3, harvest soybeans closed up 1/2, harvest winter wheat closed up 12 and harvest spring wheat closed up 13 1/4.  In the overnight trade corn is now negative with soybeans and the wheat sector still positive.  Oil closed up $0.40 yesterday at $67.58 per barrel.  It is stronger in trading again this morning with it now valued at $68.37 per barrel.  Our dollar started out yesterday morning at $0.697 US and then trended higher going up to $0.701 US in the overnight session.  It has pulled back just a bit this morning with it currently valued at $0.700 US.

It was nice to see wheat prices lead our markets higher yesterday.  They have now regained about 60% of their losses from the selloff in February.  The fundamentals for the US winter wheat crop remain consistent with the dry weather a major concern for the crop coming out of dormancy.  It has also been reported that the same factor is affecting the winter wheat crop in Russia.  This is bringing some extra support to the market.

Corn prices were unable to follow wheat higher yesterday which is somewhat disappointing.  As they compete in the feed market most times each market will mirror the other in market moves.  With the large increase in acres looming this year in the US for their corn crop maybe this is keeping traders somewhat held back.

The monthly soybean crush numbers were reported yesterday for February in the US and they were somewhat disappointing.  Total crush utilized 177.87 million bushels of soybeans which was well short of the average trade estimate of 185.2 million bushels.  In January they crushed 200.4 million bushels of soybeans.  The average daily crush in February was 6.35 million bushels which was their lowest in 5 months.  Another disappointing number was that soybean oil stocks came in at 1.503 bin lbs which was well above the average trade estimate of 1.386 bin lbs.  With this data soybean oil prices somewhat surprisingly increased a bit yesterday with soybean meal pulling back a bit.

If you would like to talk about the markets or price some of your crop for the future or in store, please reach out to us via phone or email to info@northgowergrains.com. Prices quoted herein are for product at our elevator.