Word: wheats
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...selling off their herds because of burnt pastures and a shortage of feed. Farther north, the Dakotas and eastern Montana have been enduring a drought for almost a year. In Montana, range lands were devastated, and crop losses were estimated at up to 90%. Worst off: winter and spring wheat, barley, oats...
...market has also been helped by the timing of the Soviet decision to resume buying American grain on the last year of a five-year contract. It was announced last week that the Soviets will make an initial purchase of 100,000 metric tons each of corn and wheat. That, plus an influx of commercial buyers, has pushed farm prices up for almost all commodities. "I don't think you can be bearish on anything," says Howard Fisher, a Chicago Board of Trade broker...
Prices for key commodities, such as corn and soybeans, are now higher than they were before the Soviet embargo. Iowa farmers, who were getting $2.15 per bu. of corn before the embargo, were getting $2.76 at week's end, the highest price in nearly four years. Wheat in central Kansas closed the week at $3.70 per bu., nearly back to the $3.80 price in January. Beef prices, however, will start falling by November because of accelerated slaughtering due to the drought. That will result in somewhat lower beef prices then, but higher ones early next year...
Thus, while Southern farmers are downcast, many of their Midwestern counterparts are happy. The reason: their heavy stocks of wheat or corn in storage are now worth more. Said Maurice Van Nostrand, an official of the giant A.G.R.I. Industries, a cooperative of grain elevator operators: "In the last two weeks, we have been buying three times as much as we did in May. I can't imagine the market being more powerful, even if the Russians were still...
Officials predicted that the bad weather would add no more than one-tenth of 1% to the cost of food this year. The important 1.85 billion bu. winter-wheat crop had already matured before the weather turned bad. In addition, the U.S. holds such huge agricultural reserves, like the 1.7 billion bu. of corn and 901 million bu. of wheat from past good harvests, that there is at present no danger of shortages. The recent years of harvest feasts will permit U.S. agriculture as a whole to survive a relatively short period of drought and heat...