Weather key to corn, soybean balance sheet, says economist

July 2nd, 2012

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Category: Oilseeds

(AgriNews) – The drought now creeping over much of the eastern Corn Belt and southwest U.S. hadn’t started, the day was sunny and the corn in west-central Iowa looked good.

But Steve Meyer told a cautionary tale to the producers gathered at the World Pork Expo.

“Ninety-six million acres is great, but you better get some bushels out of every one of those acres or we’re still going to have a tight supply situation,” said Meyer, livestock economist and president of Paragon Economics as he presented his outlook and predictions for both the U.S. livestock and grain sectors over the coming months.

Meyer spoke at the annual outlook luncheon at the World Pork Expo in Des Moines.

“If it stops raining this week and doesn’t rain and goes to 100 degrees for a month this summer, we’d have 1988 all over again, which that year we had a nice spring, and we could still have $7 or $8 corn,” he said. “Corn, in my book, is strictly a weather situation. Early planting takes away some risk, but that risk is mainly the risk of an early frost.”

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