Our Next Leg of The Trip Was An Important One: We Headed North From Northern IN to central MI (Battle Creek)–Anticipating That We’d Find The Prevent-Plant Acres So Much Discussed By The Trade In The Past 3 Weeks. This Area Is Also Prime Corn & Soybean Country. But, Very Much Like IN & MO, Very Little P.P. Was To Be Found…And Even More Intriguing Is That The Crop Looks Nearly Identical To The Vast Majority of What We Saw in IN & MO. AND IN FACT, MUCH TO OUR SURPRISE, A LOT OF THE TALLEST CORN & SOYBEANS WE SAW WERE NEAR THE IN-MI BORDER! The First Three Pictures Are Of Far Northern IN-Southern MI, While The 2nd Group of 3 (with man in photo) Were Closer To Battle Creek. This Poses An Interesting Feature To Both Corn & Soy Crops So Far Seen In This Trip—It’s Shaping-up To Be A Crop That Reproduces Very Nearly All At The Same Time…Right About 30-40 Days Late. So, We Can Probably Hone-in On The Pollination/Pod-Fill Time Very Well [Much Better Than We Had Anticipated]. We’ll See If This Is Consistent As We Debark From West-Central OH (Dayton) On Wednesday Morning.

So, Where Were The Prevent-Plant Acres? We Found Them Just As We Were Driving From Ann Arbor To Toledo–As Soon As We Hit Toledo, OH on I-75, We Could See Field After Field of Weeds & Nothing In The Ground. This Stopped Around The Wapakoneta-Lima Area, And Guess What? The Fields Started Looking Like IN & MO & MI Fields Again. You Can See This In The Pics Below.

Where Does That Leave Us In The Market? We don’t have all the pieces of the puzzle yet, but we do know that my analysis of looking at the US Dollar, the Wheat, and The Weather Are Very Key. Below Is The Most Recent 7-Day Precip. Forecast from the GFS Model. Thankfully, The Euro is in better agreement with this. Thus, we will have continued difficulty fighting this crop stand and getting necessary fieldwork done; additionally, wetter weather coming-in this week is likely to keep disease pressure high. And we’ll have to see if the temperatures cool-down…this is going to be very significant based upon what I’ve seen (even though I’m no agronomist), HDD and Sunlight are going to be crucial in my view in order to get anywhere near a normal national average yield. (2) On the currency front, take a look at the Chinese Yuan since the Trump-Xi-Kim Mtgs.–very strong in the Yuan again, helping to secure a more stable Asian market & commodity sector…as witnessed by the strengthening Brazilian Real heading to a key support line & the overnight surge here in the Crude. This has helped offset the strengthening USD against the Japanese Yen–which has helped create a strengthening in the US Dollar Index. (3) RECALL WHAT I’VE WRITTEN AND SPOKEN ABOUT WHEN IT COMES TO THE TRIANGULATION OF US-CHINA-N. KOREA NEGOTIATIONS; TRUMP MEETING BOTH XI & KIM HELPED KICK-START NEGOTIATIONS: SO FAR THE MARKETS “LIKE” IT, AND THE USDA REPORT HAS BEEN SET ON A SIDE-BURNER. WE’LL SEE IF THIS LASTS THROUGH THE CROP PROGRESS & CONDITIONS REPORT THIS AFTERNOON OR NOT. END

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