Grain Year in Review

I’m KayDee Gilkey with the Market Line Report for December 26, 2014.

Of course the commodity markets were closed yesterday for Christmas. Hope your Christmas day was filled with family, friends, laughter and good memories. Today Jackson Commodities Henry Kornegay gives us a year in review when it comes to the grain market.

Kornegay: “So this year was a wild ride for commodities across the board for both the bulls and the bears. As far as wheat and corn goes — we began the year with a U.S. ending stocks of 1.2 billion bushels of corn and 590 million bushels of wheat. After the latest December report those numbers were adjusted and we are now looking at even higher ending stocks at 1.9 billion bushels of corn and 654 million bushels of wheat — also higher. This comes as a result of higher production in the both the U.S. and the world and also an increase competition in world export market. Coming into the end of the year, we saw prices recover from the lows in late September to the current levels today of $4.14 in March in corn and $6.33 in March Chicago wheat. We believe this is due in part to world concerns over the current Ukrainian wheat conditions and also expectations that Russia may limit their wheat exports to Egypt, Turkey, Armenia and India. This should cause an increase demand for U.S. grain. Depending on the upcoming growing seasons for both the U.S. and world we may find ourselves still battling for market share versus the other major exporting countries based on the amount of wheat we have.”