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Little old crop corn in northwest Iowa

A commodities broker based in northwest Iowa says there’s not a lot of old crop corn in storage.

Shane Holtorf with Logic Ag Marketing tells Brownfield there’s been strong demand regionally with several ethanol plants and feed mills.

“So we saw really strong basis in the fall that continued to pull new crop grain away, and then it softened up in the new year as grain was really flowing. And now we’re seeing basis start to get strong again, and it’s pretty shocking to me how many people are sitting with a lot of their crop already moved.”

He tells Brownfield many elevators in the area changed their harvest storage program, which changed marketing strategies for area farmers.

“People ended up selling their cash grain and looking to utilize futures or options to kind of offset some of that, and so a lot of grain did leave the farmers’ hands early.”

Holtorf estimates farmers in northwest Iowa are 15 to 20 percent more heavily marketed off the farm compared to a typical year.