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Vilsack: Moving crop reports ‘complicated’
Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack says the USDA is studying its procedures for releasing crop reports in response to new expanded trading hours implemented by the CME Group.
But Vilsack says changing report release times is not as simple as it sounds.
“A decision as to timing and information being accessible can potentially make the difference of millions of dollars, one way or the other, to those who are trading,” Vilsack says, “and now we have essentially two competing entities that have different hours that don’t necessarily align.”
Those competing entities are the CME Group and the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), which recently expanded its trading in grain futures.
The Kansas City Board of Trade and MGEX, formerly the Minneapolis Grain Exchange, have followed suit and expanded their trading hours as well.
The challenge, Vilsack says, is to continue providing the information in a transparent and equitable way, “to do it in a very timely way, but not to distort the market or provide an undue advantage to someone or some entity as a result.”
USDA’s monthly crop reports are released at 7:30 a.m. Central time, when grain trading has traditionally been halted.
Vilsack made his comments during a conference call with reporters on Tuesday.
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