3 things to watch

Added: 2026-05-30

[00:00:01]This is Carl with the three things I'm watching for Thursday, May the 28th. Uh starting off, I'll talk about processing margins. I've been watching these mainly on soybean crush and ethanol grain.

[00:00:14]Ethanol grain right now averaging about 45 cents a bushel across the United States.

[00:00:21]Uh soybean grind board crush coming in right around 335 to 340. Interior grain margin running about 30 cents higher.

[00:00:31]So, that interior market, you know, we're still around that, you know, 385, 390 per bushel on our crush. So, pretty good margins there. Um the question's come up, how long will this last? You know, with uncertainty on the Iran war, you know, we see the up and down in crude oil.

[00:00:51]Um yeah, that is affecting our margins a little bit, but we got to remember, we had these really good crush margins a year ago. I mean, we saw record crush margins on soybeans last summer, record record grind on ethanol. And that was long before the Iran war. So, even, you know, the Iran war has added to it for the boost in renewable fuel demand, but we got to remember, those plants have been running full board before, and they're still running at full speed after shutting down for spring maintenance. So, really, even if the the war stutters a little bit, our processing margins holding in there very good. Now, I'm not saying they'll be able to remain that way forever, but not getting as as wound up or as impacted as much by the war as as what we may be thinking. Keep an eye on that one.

[00:01:47]Uh second thing I'm watching today, US acres.

[00:01:51]A lot of talk came out after the March intentions even of maybe an additional one to two million corn acres shifting over to soybeans due to the high input costs.

[00:02:02]Uh inputs have have stabilized and actually backed down a little bit on urea fertilizer if you can find it. But, the question remains, what will we see for acre shifting?

[00:02:13]Um probably fewer than what we initially thought, especially with favorable planting conditions. And this has taken some of the pressure off the soy complex. Um you know, we may only see a million acres and it may be less than that. And less than a million acres probably not going to impact the market all that much, uh really.

[00:02:32]Um but, it is something we're going to keep an eye on in case we come in and it's, you know, we had an outlier. Um the June revisions on June 30th is when that will be released this year, I believe. Um that will give us a little bit better of an indication. We'll have planting wrapped up well ahead of that. Uh next couple weeks here we'll start gaining uh garnering information for that. So, bottom line is uh the acre just doesn't look like we're going to see as big of a shift. Um like I said, input costs, weather a lot more favorable as the planting season progressed.

[00:03:09]And as I was running weather, that's my third topic I want to talk about and it's current weather conditions. So, we know that much of the heart of the corn belt is really still pretty good conditions. We got heat and then it cools off. We've had rains.

[00:03:25]Right around the Great Lakes we're sitting pretty good.

[00:03:28]Um get outside of that and we have some issues. And it depends where you're at.

[00:03:33]And right now there's two sides to the weather story. Yes, we've seen extreme heat. Fargo, North Dakota hitting 90° yesterday. Um you know, there's a lot you know, a lot of drought stress. We know it's in the drought. But, at this time of the year you're able to get the crop planted and you're able to get your, you know, first round of uh crop protection applications applied.

[00:03:56]Um, you know, the puts the roots down, goes on and on. There's several benefits. And that is true for about the next week or two. But we get past that and we start to get concerning when it starts to dry out and especially if that heat starts to build. What is slightly bearish now can turn bullish real fast.

[00:04:17]And that's why we're seeing a market that's on edge. And that's why when we see the breaks, we do see some managed money buying come in. That risk money added to the futures tells us that they're a little bit concerned about the crop dynamics yet.

[00:04:31]Those are the three things I'm watching today.