Grain bins across farm country remain relatively full, with some growers holding out hope for a rally that market analysts warn may never come. While the markets may be challenging, managing that kind of storage is also no easy task.
Dan Lakey has 250,000 bushels of storage on his Idaho operation. He tells DTN that keeping bins checked for quality has become an ongoing chore, and it also affects planning. He says bin size can influence how much he grows, adding that he lines up field sizes so they do not exceed what he can physically store. In Kentucky, grain farmer Quint Pottinger says that when it comes to drying and storage, he calls it an art.
Right now, over a third of the old crop of U.S. corn is in storage, creating a problem for this harvest season.
“We still have more old-crop corn than I am comfortable with here. And yeah, that crop has to hit the marketplace here over the next month, month and a half, to prepare for the full harvest that’s in coming here. And so I do see, you know, any potential rallies that may come up here over the next month, month and a half, are going to be met by that wave of corn clearing out of the bins, therefore blunting that potential price movement we could see,” said Chad Hart.
Hart says summer rallies are usually because of short crops in places like Brazil, which is an unlikely scenario this year.
