If you are holding onto grain to sell before harvest, you may have checked cash bids or listened to the Basis Matters program this morning and got a big surprise. The basis level has dropped like a stone overnight. I have seen drops as small as a nickel to a buck and a quarter a bushel. Why is that happening?
Jim McCormick is with AgMarket.Net. He talked with us during the Opening Market Podcast this morning. He says when it comes to the basis, we have seen farmers that have held on to old crop grains, and now they may pay the price for waiting too long.
Exacerbating the issues with the grain markets is the intense heat in the second half of August and coming this weekend. That is causing the crops to not “dry down” but “die down”. That means we are losing bushels as the crop nears harvest. This means we could see harvest moving fast and way ahead of schedule.
Couple that with low water in our shipping lanes of the Mississippi and the Panama Canal, and it could spell disaster.
If you are hanging on to bushels before harvest, McCormick recommends you move them sooner rather than later.
