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      1/3/08

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

            Futures continue the New Year tear! Crude oil tops $100/ bbl, before settling a bit lower. Opening call was for strongly higher prices throughout the complex and traders did not disappoint. Wheat demand seems to be as strong as ever with little or no evidence of any rationing at this point. Japan has been tendering for “distant” slots in May and June to be sure that they have coverage, while most others are content to continue to inventory on “just in time”. Selling has been relatively light in wheat and corn.

            USDA Ag economist Keith Collins released some plantings estimates. His work shows 4 myn acre increase in wheat acres (that is only about a 6% increase vs. last year). USDA implies through the S&D’s that seed usage is up 12-13%…so perhaps Mr. Collins is projecting acres will eventually be taken out in favor of beans/ corn. He has corn acres dropping down to about 87.5 myn acres. IF IF corn usage remains status quo, and IF we hit trendline yields, IF abandonment is a normal 8-8 ½%. We will eat into carryout stocks and shrink carryout by about 300 myn bu. SOOOO as we hear more about acreages, 88-89 myn corn acres at 153 and we can ‘back into’ a corn carryout number that won’t be too painful. Anything less than those numbers and carryouts shrink, so the market needs to ‘buy’ at that many acres….with the assumptions above.

            France is still fighting the political battle on GMO’s. They even have activists staging a ‘hunger’ strike. That might be good practice for them anyway. Meanwhile the Aussies appear ready to embrace GMO’s as a way to help fight the droughts that they are continuing to see.

            Taiwan is in tonight for a mixed cargo of various classes of wheat. Also Vera Sun has received DOJ approval to purchase Bio-Energy, in a pretty large scale ethanol buyout.

***Didja Know: Teflon was invented in the 1930’s as a DOW chemist was trying to develop a better refrigerant? In the 1960’s 3M came out with a paste to glue papers together. The sheets stuck, but came apart easily…the ‘post it’ was born. Nylon was invented in 1934 while 2 chemists were horsing around in the lab while the boss was gone. They got some ‘stretchy’ material and were pulling it down the hallways, what they didn’t realize was that the stretching was changing the molecular structure. In the 1850’s Levi Strauss was selling ‘tents’. What the prospectors really needed were tough clothes. The rest is history.