USDA Economist: Producers marketed most of old crop before price rally

May 17, 2021 11:22 AM

Prices for U.S. crops began to rise last August, and despite last week’s sell-off, they have not really stopped.

USDA’s chief economist says that the problem with last year’s crop was that producers marketed most of it before the price rally. However, he admits this year could be quite different.

According to Seth Meyer, “Now there’s an opportunity going forward, the market will be on edge, the market will watch the development of our crop, and there’ll be an opportunity to capture more of this higher prices in their marketings, and so producers will be able to take advantage of it.”

USDA predicts prices for the new crop year will continue rising compared to the current marketing year. The department sees corn, soybeans, and wheat between 20-30 percent higher and cotton 10 percent higher.

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