In a normal year, most farmers send soybeans to the elevator, and store their corn and wheat to sell at a later point, when the prices generally have a chance to do a little bit of seasonal rising.
The Williston Herald reports that this, however, isn’t a normal year for any farmer growing soybeans, and that has NDSU extension specialists weighing in with advice on what to do.
“Elevators in the eastern portion of North Dakota have pulled their bids for soybeans. There is literally no price for soybeans,” Risk Management Analyst Dr. Frayne Olson, with NDSU, told the Herald. “Right now, it’s a small number of elevators, but I do expect more as we get closer to harvest. It’s going to be very, very hard to sell soybeans at harvest.”
Elevators are trying to save the storage space they have for the soybeans they have already bought on a contract basis, Olson explained.
Something like 75% of North Dakota soybeans generally go to an elevator, where they’re put on a train for an export terminal or elevator in the Pacific Northwest, but the 25% Chinese tariff on U.S. soybeans is causing turmoil.
Read the full report here.
