Latest / Professional Ag Marketing Podcast / Barrels to Bushels | Grain Talk March 12th, 2026

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Barrels to Bushels | Grain Talk March 12th, 2026 · Professional Ag Marketing Podcast

• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: You're locked in to the Green Market Talk Podcast.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Fast updates, market movers, and the green news you need right now.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: Trading commodity futures and options involved the potential risk of loss, but is not suitable for all investors.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_01: Not much, just the markets, Mike.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_01: That it is.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_02: We're going to talk about the grain markets today.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_02: It's been an exciting week thus far.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_02: It's Thursday.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_02: Let's get after it, Jaden.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_02: We've had some price moves going in some major directions, major range changes.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_02: Cade, throw up some of the charts here.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_02: Let's start with like corn and just talk about where we've been here the last uh week or so as this Iran conflict's kind of changed the price dynamics here recently.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, right, Mike.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it seems like the trade has kind of thrown fundamentals out the window, and we're just buying these commodities as an inflation hedge against this higher oil prices.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so you've got two different trades going on right now.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_02: This would be so the corn chart here, you can see we've been putting in since the beginning of January a really nice uptrend.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_02: Haven't really tested it much at all.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_02: As you look at the uh soybean.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_02: When you look at the soybean chart as well, you're seeing something similar since the beginning of January there.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, not testing much of the the 20-day moving average would be that purple line, for example.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_02: It's been uh pretty friendly to the upside on that.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_02: Uh kind of in a new upper echelon of prices, though, as of late.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_02: We had a nice tight range on that uptrend before, and now it seems like the last two days seems like we went above and beyond that line a little bit.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_02: So since the beginning of January, there when uh you know when uh we've been rallying on some of these futures.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, we're at you know, May futures at about 1227 today.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_02: Beginning of uh January, we're about ten and a half dollars, so almost two bucks that we put on the soybean market in uh in only a couple months here, Jaden.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_01: Right, Mike.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: And just over the past week, the volatility we've seen in just a single trading session, like for instance, Sunday night when crude oil did make its way to almost$120 a barrel, new crop corn D26 had had almost a chance at five bucks, and just just that day alone we had an 18 cent trading range.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_01: So this this crude oil, you know, volatility is creating you know volatility in the grain markets as well.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we've pretty much only been trading the the Iran conflict here late recently.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_02: I I don't think we've really traded any fundamentals here lately at all.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe for a couple minutes at a time, it feels like, and I'm not even exaggerating that, but that about seems it.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_02: And uh that crude oil chart, it's pretty interesting when you look at what that's done.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_02: Historically, we don't like to be above 100 bucks too much, so it it has struggled to stay there.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_02: Just one day we popped up to about 119 there on that front month, and then it uh it historically just struggles to try to stay above that.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_02: So uh it is pushing things, though.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_02: When I look at the two main markets getting traded and leading, it's mainly two trades.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_02: It's the inflation hedge that they're trading, which would be buying things like corn, buying things like soybeans, buying things like soybean oil, buying crude oil, and then you have the risk off trade, which is equities uh going into the US dollar, things like that.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_02: So you've got two different trades going on, and it's kind of moving uh commodity markets and equities uh in very rapid ways.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_02: And when you look at the impact that crude oil has had on the corn and soybean markets, it's actually pretty scary.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_02: Like the last five days this chart would show.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_02: So one line there on this chart would be the corn market, kind of in the green and the red candlestick.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_02: In the other bar graph, you'd have the purple and the blue.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_02: Honestly, at this point, you can tell over the past uh five days there's been an incredibly strong correlation between crude oil prices and the corn market.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_02: And uh that's no coincidence, Jaden.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_01: Right, Mike.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_01: And when when we kind of see some sort of a sell-off in the crude oil market, we see it enter into the equities.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_01: And like if you look at the equities too, it's basically an inverse.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_01: Like they're they're heavily not correlated, I guess you could say.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_01: So it's interesting to watch the money flow over the last two weeks, and you can definitely see a correlation, like you said, between the crude oil and the green markets.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's been uh interesting to watch here.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_02: How long this is gonna stick around will definitely be by uh the intensity of the conflict, how long this goes on.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, you know, if you continue to see things like this afternoon, uh there was a uh a problem, a terrorist attack type event in the United States, things like that could maybe make this war pick up a little bit more if it or conflict a little bit more if it would lead to something like uh troops on the ground in I in Iran, something along those lines, this could escalate pretty greatly.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_02: Um otherwise, if if it is just continued, a few airstrikes here and there, you know, we saw with the Russia-Ukraine war it it traded it for a few weeks more or less, and then it started to fade off after a rapid incline, so or increase.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_02: So going forward here, keep an eye on this crude oil market, keep an eye on the equity market, and then everything else is really branching off of that and and trading those two items, I think, in a very similar manner.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_02: And uh that'll continue to really control the pace until probably we get towards what, the end of the month, you think, Jaden.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_02: And uh then we're gonna talk about things that are indirectly correlated with some of this stuff, like the Iran conflict where you have Iran using the Strait of Hormuz as a leverage uh valve to say if I can shut that off, they mined it here the other day.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_02: Uh say uh they they destroyed a cargo ship there as well.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_02: That's their leverage that they can use.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_02: And a few different items, you know, like we get a lot of fertilizer from that part of the world that flows through that strait.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_02: Um uh China gets 38% of their crude oil through the Strait of Hormuz one way or another.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_02: So major, major global trade disruption for the first time in a very long time here in the in uh the Strait of Hormuz, and the impact that could have down the line is very important on things like acres.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_02: The end of this month, I think you would agree this month's gonna be a huge month for soybeans.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_02: And uh that being the case, that one, we're trading this Iran conflict, two, we also have things like perspective planning coming out at the end of the month here, which uh that could be greatly influenced by this because one, if I have a really quick, rapid planting pace in the in history and corn price is decent, it would suggest normally we continue to plant corn, uh extra corn acres beyond what we had accounted for.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_02: If I get out there, we plant for five days and I plant really fast and it's it's going good.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_02: We want to continue to put a couple more fields in, normally in this area, especially.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_02: Now, going forward, that's gonna be really tough to do this year.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_02: A lot of folks just pulled their bids on fertilizer completely because of this conflict, and and uh there's no available fertilizer extra, so to say, in the United States.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_02: That's gonna deter a lot of those acreage switches to corn at the end of the month.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe they'll pick up on that here, Jaden.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_02: But uh in the Outlook report, they had 94 million acres of corn suggested.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_02: We'll see what they come out with uh at the end of March here.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_02: And then also we've got an important meeting coming up at the end of the March, don't we?
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, right, Mike.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_01: So Trump and G are scheduled to meet here the end of March.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_01: We want to say around March 31st there.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_01: But this weekend, Besson and some other Chinese leaders will be meeting in Paris to go over the talks before Trump and G actually meet.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_01: And that, you know, the market, you know, Trump put out that tweet, was it about a month ago?
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_01: It seems like not that long ago, but it was probably a month ago by now, of the consideration of China buying more soybeans.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_01: So I think the market's kind of looking forward.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_01: Can we actually hash out a trade deal with China?
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: Like, uh are we actually gonna see, you know, them fulfill their commitments over the next three years?
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I think the market's really looking forward to that.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: So nonetheless, definitely a big, really big month for soybean fundamentals going forward.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, a few other things.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_02: This has really driven uh a boost in grain sales recently, Jaden.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, a lot of cash sales for these farmers uh in the United States on this rally, and uh that's been widening basis really, really bad in the Western Corn Belt.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_02: So keep an eye on some basis levels because if you got old crop sitting out there, uh some of that's taken a massive hit in the Western corn belt, especially here.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_02: Uh a few other items you'd want to chat with uh today, whether it be fertilizer, straight of horn moose, uh anything with um anything with uh with those topics here, Jaden.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I guess just to add, we did have a WASD report this week.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_02: You probably how could we forget about that?
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_02: My goodness.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: Probably should mention that on the green uh YouTube video here.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, kind of a sleeper report normally does.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_01: All we really saw there was actually corn, the balance sheet they left the same, same as soybean.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: They added imports and and then added um some or took away some imports and added some crush there.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: But um other than that, they re they added some ending stocks for the corn uh world balance sheet, other than that, kind of a snoozer of a port.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, I think going forward we're looking at that March planting intentions report and also the meeting between Trump and G, and then looking at this uh conflict in Iran.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_02: It was incredibly boring of a report, let alone even if it was exciting.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_02: I I'm assuming we probably weren't gonna trade it much this week with the way things have looked.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_02: Other than that, um the EIA can't the EIA came out with a report just uh yesterday that showed that we have pretty good oil stocks here in the United States, too.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_02: So uh it's something to keep in mind as crude oil prices have rapidly ran up because of this conflict that we've, you know, in the United States, we're sitting on a lot of crude oil, being the largest crude oil producer now in the world, too.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, you know, we're set up uh our producers are in a pretty good spot to take advantage of that, Jaden.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: So right, Mike.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: And our our administration, crude administration, doesn't like expensive oil.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_01: They want cheap gas, low inflation.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_01: So it'll be interesting to see how this in administration combats this um problem going forward.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: They started to a little bit here.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_02: They did release a record amount of uh reserves here, of up to 400 million barrels of uh of oil from emergency stockpiles there.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_02: So a few things are starting to do with the Jones Act as well.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_02: That kind of pushed crude oil down a little bit this week.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_02: But nonetheless, you're gonna have two different trades happening.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_02: Inflation hedging here if they need it, and uh risk off until something else changes in this in this conflict.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_02: And it's been uh an exciting week.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_02: We've got a lot of a lot of hedging activity, a lot of uh a lot of old crop corn and soybeans have been caught up on sales.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_02: So continue to continue to keep an eye on some of those items and take steps forward as prices move up here and and uh really reach out to us.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_02: We'd love to chat with anyone out there who wants to talk about the grain markets and and some of the things they should be doing on their farm Jaden.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_01: Right, Mike.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_01: You know what they say volatility creates opportunity, right?
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_02: And it does, and there's a heck of a lot of that these days.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_02: All right, thank you for joining me today, and we'll see you next time.