Morrow County Grain Growers                             Pendleton Grain Growers

             Duane Disque or John Ripple                                      Jon Sperl

             1-800-452-7396 or 541-989-8221                           1-800-422-7611 or 541-276-7611

              or Dan Steiner 481-6614 (office), 571-3798 (cell)  graingrowers@centurytel.net

                                                            GOOD MORNING!!!

            Below are the best indicated market bids as of:   9:00  on      1/24/08

***NOTE: Corn values vary depending on delivery location PLEASE call for updates.

            When specs are carrying such HUGE longs volatility will always be present, you just won’t see as much as we saw yesterday! The specs carrying HUGE longs is ok, as long as things are OK, but when they start to look shaky they have their hand hovering over the “Sell” button, things like yesterday happen. The Dow traded a 600 pt range, dropping 300, before recovering and adding 302 in gains. Grain futures never did recover yesterday, since they closed long before some the stock market calmed down. Then this morning on ‘above the fold’ type news from France, a single rogue trader generated $7.14 BYN in bogus trades (LOSSES). He was only 30 when he was ‘discharged’. China says that their economy grew at 11% last year! Meanwhile grain sales remain brisk with Turkey and Iraq in tonight, and Japan booked its full complement of 7.9 myn bu last night (sounds like it was pretty much all HRW/ DNS).

            New crop wheat conditions are starting out all over the board. Texas is very concerned about stress showing up  in their crops. India says that their crops are looking good. The prospects for a HUMONGOUS world wheat crop this year are very good. IGC says a there is a potential for 40 myn mt (1.5 byn bu, or about ¾ of an average US wheat crop) increase in wheat production this year vs. last. It would make sense to closely watch these markets and reward them. $9 new crop SWW would not be a bad sale. Same thing could be said for $11.60 DNS and $9.80 HRW. Yes, I do believe there is upside in all these markets, particularly the red wheats, but yesterday should also serve as a reminder that the spec money is driving the bus, and they can easily put us into the ditch.

A quick check to see how things ‘down under’ are going: In the last month, Western Aussie has received AT LEAST 1” with many parts receiving more. Much of NSW and Victoria have received up to 2”. The Aussie meteorologists say that the next couple months look to be ‘wet’.

***Didja Know: FSU/ Russia has BY far the largest wheat acres (about 122 myn acres last year, with large increases expected this year) in the world? Know who #2 is? India. FWIW the USDA estimated 46 myn acres of winter in the US, with projected total plantings somewhere around 64-66 myn acres.