Iowa Land Auction Prices, December 27, 2019-January 2, 2020

Posted on January 6, 2020 at 11:17 AM by Jim Rothermich

The last auctions for 2019 have come to an end but with strong results, the lowest sale coming in at $109/CSR2 point. There is lot of attention from the Ag news media about trade and Ag exports. If you look at export statistics, only three commodities have seen significant year-to-date reductions from 2018 and they are not soybeans or pork. Corn, tobacco, hides, and skins are the big losers. Two of those can be blamed on China, but corn is not one of them. Corn exports in 2019 are nearly 40% lower than the same period one year ago. China, by the way, is not even in the top 10 consumers of United States corn. The top of the list is Mexico, and our neighbor to the south purchased 12.5% less corn this year. Number two is Japan and we saw a reduction of 27.2% year to date. Coming in third is Columbia, down by 29.7%. The only positive story on the list of top 10 U.S. corn customers was Canada, who increased purchases by 20.8%. The truth of the matter is that U.S. farmers have held their own in exports in 2019 in basically everything but corn. The Ag news media is not reporting this.

For other farm product exports, wheat leads the way in big growth by 19%, rice was up 16%, red meat was up 8%, and dairy was up 5%. Soybeans, with all the noise about China, increased by 1%. The bottom line is when the trade deals with Mexico, Canada, & China come to fruition, export numbers should go up and this will provide great economic opportunity for U.S. producers. (Source: Trent Loos, High Plains Journal)