If you’ve been paying attention to ag media recently, you know talking about futures spreads and forward curves has become “cool”, much more so than it was 18 months ago. Recall then the favored themes were trade wars are good for US industries, including agriculture, and USDA was the be-all and end-all of market fundamentals. Fast forward to today and the climate has changed, with many of those who sat on the other side of the table now [...]

Those of you who have followed me over the years are familiar with my belief that data collection, organization, and dissemination should be privatized. This is based on the age-old business proverb, “You get what you pay for”, meaning “the quality of goods and services increases as the prices increase.” I used this line often back when I was working for an agriculture media company, where our farm show presence was always met with a chorus of, “Why [...]

As I’ve said many times over the last couple months, everything we do from here on out constitutes a “new normal”. A case in point is last week’s Kansas wheat tour, an event that usually occurs in early May and consists of dozens of participants driving around the state on well-worn routes to measure, calculate, and guess total wheat acres planted and expected production. Though I never went on the tour itself, I’ve known a number of folks [...]