COVINGTON, Ind. — On Tuesday, Illinois Public Media and its WILL AM 580 broadcasting arm sponsored its 20th annual All Day Agricultural Outlook meeting.

According Dave Dickey, director of agricultural programming, it has become a popular informational tool for local farmers.

“This forum began 20 years ago as an evening meeting with three guest speakers and a small group of farmers here at the Beef House,” said Dickey. “Today, we have 20 guest speakers and over 400 farmers in a forum that lasts all day.”

Dickey said that this year’s event was a sellout.

“If I had space for 700, I could have easily filled it,” added Dickey.

The theme of this year’s agricultural outlook was “Managing Market Volatility”. Much of the discussion centered on the soybean market.

“The soybean market is in a sideways trend,” Curt Kimmel of Bates Commodities of Bloomington told farmers. “We are in a supply driven, bear market with soybean commodity prices.”

Kimmel said South American farmers are beginning their soybean harvest. Estimates are that it is going to be a larger crop than in the past. If this is true, then this will have a definite downward pressure on soybean prices.

Mike Zuzolo of Global Commodity Analytics in Lafayette, Ind., believes there will demand concern in the second half of this year.

“With a near record South American crop and if there is a better than average U.S. crop then there will be significant downward pressure on prices,” said Zuzolo.

Many of the market analysts at the meeting said logistics also may play a role in soybean prices. They cite South America’s slower pace at harvesting and smaller ports may delay shipping soybeans. They also said a delay in Brazil’s harvest could bump it up against the 2010 U.S. soybean harvest causing saturation in the market.

One analyst told the audience that freight rates in South America have already jumped and that numerous cargo ship already are booked, which may lead to a bottleneck in South American ports.

The increase in freight rates from South American has recently pushed the Japanese back to buying in the U.S. due to a more favorable freight cost.

Some of the analysts at the meeting see China as the great unknown in the soybean market with just three to four weeks left before all China contracts will be filled. It is unknown if the Chinese will decide to go on a shopping spree for South American soybeans.

The Chinese are buying 108 percent of their annual needs, which means they are beginning to stockpile soybeans.

Another factor that may play into the Chinese buying more soybeans is that they want to double the size of their hog herd. The Chinese hog herd is estimated to be 800 million and they want to double it in size. This means that all of their corn crop in addition to planting more acres to corn will be needed to feed the herd, meaning they will be unable to expand their soybean production therefore forcing them to buy abroad.

Another entertaining speaker at Tuesday’s meeting was Joe Prusacki, statistics division director for the National Agricultural Statistics Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Prusacki’s job is to collect and report crop data in the USDA crop reports.

According to Prusacki, the NASS was founded in 1863 with its first crop report issued in July 1863.

“The first crop report in 1863 was on wool production, which at that time during the Civil War was an important commodity because wool was used for soldier’s uniforms,” Prusacki told the audience. “That first crop report also included wool production from the Confederate states.”

Prusacki said NASS is a professional agency with no political appointees. He said NASS issues 500 reports a year with six of those crop reports used as one of the principal indicators of the U.S. economy.

“The crop report is the first snapshot we get of this nation’s economy,” said Prusacki.

NASS collects data from farmers with over 5,000 acres and uses those to make up the crop reports.

“There are 2.2 million farms in the U.S.,” Prusacki added. “Only 800,000 contribute to the ag industry.”

Prusacki said in 2007-2008 those 800,000 farms had 315 million acres that were crop producing.

He also noted that 2.2 million acres in North and South Dakota were not planted last year due to weather.

Another interesting fact is that the U.S. is at its lowest level of winter wheat production since 1917.

He also said that NASS crop reports will impact commodity prices.

The corn outlook given at Tuesday’s meeting was somewhat less than positive.

“The corn market will continue to struggle,” said Dan Zwicker of ADM Grain Group in Decatur. “We see a reduction in crop size with prices drifting sideways to lower and bottoming out in the summer.”

Zwicker and other analysts point to 6.2 million acres of land that were not planted to winter wheat this year. It is believed that 2 million acres of that will go to soybean production and 2 million acres to corn production, thus creating further downward pressure on corn prices.

One of the key items to come out of the 2010 Agricultural Outlook meeting was that 50 percent of farming these days is marketing. Farmers need to protect themselves by cash forward sales, through crop insurance and to participate in the ACRE program.

FYI

More agricultural information can be obtained every day by tuning to WILL AM 580 or by visiting its Web site at http://www.willag.org.