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Broker says good marketing opportunities exist

A commodity broker says several commodities besides corn and soybeans saw stronger prices in 2019. Carl Babler with Atten Babler Risk Management says, “The Bloomberg Commodity Index is one that tracks I think twenty-four different commodity prices and puts them in an index, and that index has been improving a little bit.”

Babler tells Brownfield there is still a strong global supply of corn, soybeans, and wheat, but some farmers will increase plantings in oats, rice, and cotton because of recent price increases.  Babler says most of his clients are leaning towards more corn in 2020. “They’ve just been very surprised, pleasantly, by ongoing improvement in corn yield, and when you get a corn crop that surprises you by ten or fifteen bushels an acre, that makes a big difference on your revenue per acre and your bottom line.”

Babler believes U.S. growers will be back in the export markets more in 2020. He also encourages farmers to look now at some fall marketing. “You’ve got yourself some four dollar corn offered in December of ’20, you’ve got some bean prices that are also up there at $9.80 for November.”

Babler says 2^nd quarter milk is around $17.30 and there’s been a recent run in the cattle markets giving producers several marketing opportunities.

Bloomberg reports vegetable oil prices went up 27% because of a lower soybean crush traceable to African Swine Fever in China and rice was up 28% because of wet conditions and one of the smallest western hemisphere rice crops on record.