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Fontanelle, IA | COVID killed gas/EtOH demand for about 1 month. Take your largest end user and take them out of the equation... affects corn basis.
Corn basis gets whacked because local corn demand is less. Animal kill Plants can’t kill fat hogs in a timely fashion or take your pigs at all. Pork folks feed a little more corn while waiting for a kill slot. Corn demand increases a little. Sow integrators say WTF where are all my little piglets going to go? Who will buy them? Hit the abort button on a turn.... now we have another hole in corn demand....
USDA /NASS folks probably forced to “work” from home. Wonder how many WASDE prep meetings were actually done face to face? How many USDA sample surveys were actually returned by coops/farmers/grain exporters in a timely fashion... and how could they force people to climb bins/lock out tag out/when social distancing dictated otherwise. All resulting in data delays if USDA even received the data at all.
So all of us that “trust” in what the market was telling us (via S&D and such) get to each decide when and what price “looks” good to sell how much. “3 billion corn carry out. Worst stocks to use since 1980’s”.... today trimmed in half. If you flinched and sold in June, July, august based on the data we were given, then COVID messed you up because it set “fair value” on its ear. The corn bottom and 30-40 cents up into the $3.65-$3.70 range seemed like Christmas.
USDA has finally, maybe, caught up with the current.
Long answer- yes, COVID impacted us all. We’re all on a 3 legged stool and COVID sawed off 1 demand leg and knocked a 2nd leg off while the “authority” said “all good, nothing to see here- plenty of buffer”.
If you had the financial where-with-all or the brass balls and an understanding on-board banker to shut your bins and say not going to sell 2019 crop until 2021, then you are correct in your premise. If you’re in the other camp, then it’s pretty hard to accept that “COVID did NOT affect me financially”.
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Moral Dilemma and PPP
