Harvest has been crawling along for months and while some farmers were able to get all of their grain out there’s still a substantial amount in the field. In fact, Mark Gold of Top Third Ag Marketing estimates there are 700 million bushels of corn and another 300 million bushels of soybeans still unharvested. While he says farmers will be able to get the grain out of the field at some point, there will be quality implications to deal with.
“Whether it's [harvested] early spring, or at some other point, there will be damage to the corn. It's not going to be great, but we're not going to lose 700 million bushels of corn, because it's still out in the field,” he explained to Tyne Morgan on AgDay TV. “The beans, on the other hand, you're going to do a lot more damage with the beans than you are with the corn. And if those beans don't come in, and when they do come in, if they're shattered beans, if they're low quality, if they're damaged beans, whatever, that could make an impact.”
According to Gold, the potential losses and delays won’t be realized by the markets for a while. In fact, he says it might not show up in a stocks report until the end of June.
“It's going to be a tough number to get a good handle on and guys will trade the ability of it not to know where we are right now,” he said. “So that'll go back and forth for a while.”
However, Gold expects the next USDA report to show a reduction in yield that’s significant enough to move the market.
“That's why I'm not overly bearish in here, even if we don't have a trade agreement,” he said.
agprofessional.com