Has Corn Hit a Bottom?

Greetings! So much to talk about, I'll jump right in!

Grain analyst Jim Wyckoff said the market is still digesting the surprisingly bullish corn data from Friday’s USDA reports. He said March corn futures scored a bullish key reversal on the daily charts and a bullish weekly high close on Friday. The solid price gains indicated that the corn market has hit a bottom.

Jim said South American weather is being closely watched – all looks favorable at this time. However, rising temperatures are a concern.

To hear more from Jim about expectations this week on soybeans and wheat, click here.

New research has highlighted the huge risk to crops due to diminishing honeybee populations across Europe. Scientists believe that a boom in biofuels has sparked a massive increase in the need for pollination.

University of Reading researchers compared the numbers of active beehives to the demand for pollination services across 41 European countries and mapped the changes between 2005 and 2010.

They found:

• In more than half of European countries - including the UK, France, Germany and Italy, there were not enough honeybees to properly pollinate the crops grown.
• The problem was particularly acute in Britain, which has only a quarter of the honeybees it needs to pollinate crops.
• Only Moldova - one of the continent's poorest countries, with an economy more than 300 times smaller than Britain's - has a bigger honeybee deficit than the UK.
• Europe as a whole only has two thirds of the honeybee colonies it needs, with a deficit of more than 13.4 million colonies

The findings suggest that agriculture in many countries is increasingly reliant upon wild pollinators, such as bumblebees, solitary bees and hoverflies.

Researcher Dr Tom Breeze said, "The results don't show that wild pollinators actually do all the work, but they do show we have less security if their populations should collapse."

To read more, click here. 

Also of interest... fast food giant McDonald’s recent announcement that they will begin sourcing verified sustainable beef starting in 2016 with the goal to eventually only buy sustainably produced beef.

While no figures have been attached to volumes and timeline, VP for global sustainability Bob Langert was quoted in GreenBiz as saying: “Our vision is to buy verifiable, sustainable beef in the future for all of our beef.”

My personal comment is that the US beef industry had better figure out traceability or it’s going to be left behind.

To read more about McDonald’s announcement on our sister site – TheCattleSite.com, click here.

Have a great week!

Sarah