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Lack of China purchases will affect Northern Plains farmers

A market analyst says a lack of demand of U.S. soybeans from China is going to slow down grain movement in the Northern Plains this fall.

“It’s going to cause a little bit of a backlog.”

Randy Martinson is with Martinson Ag Risk Management, based in Fargo. He tells Brownfield some grain elevators in North Dakota are telling farmers they won’t be able to deliver new crop soybeans at harvest.

“There’s going to be more than half the (soybean) crop that will have to go through the elevator system somehow. Either wait for crush plants to use them or wait until there’s export business.”

North Dakota is expected to have a decent crop and he says summer storms impacted available grain storage.

“The estimates are showing 50 to 80 million bushels of capacity were destroyed,” he says. “And elevators also saw damage to their facilities.”

Martinson says soybean harvest is four to six weeks away and farmers are starting to lock in basis or try to find a way to sell to local elevators.

“Right now, basis continues to widen out. It was $1 and now, it’s $1.20 under the futures in most locations.”

Martinson says the farmers that have on-farm storage will delay corn harvest or use bags to store the corn, prioritizing on-farm bin space for soybeans.

Martinson says this will also affect grain movement in Minnesota and South Dakota.