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      5/22/08

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

            SWW feels like it is still feeling/ reeling from the BEHT announcement. Last week sales for SWW were once again a big GOOSE EGG. With the impending trust wheat to hit the market, SWW values are ill defined at best. On the week corn sales were right at 20 myn bu for o/c and very pleasant surprising 11 myn bu for n/c. Wheat sales tallied 3.6 myn o/c (we won’t hit the USDA numbers, but won’t miss by much either). The good news is that we did sell 14.5 myn bu of n/c wheat…none reported as SWW. There is a rumor that the CFTC MAY/ or is CONSIDERING limiting the size of the index funds involvement in futures markets. This would really take some of the volatility out, but would also likely lead to SHARPLY lower futures, if they are forced to reduce their positions. You know, if they did the same thing with crude we could probably take a quick $30-40/ bbl off of that too. Of coarse the floor for wheat becomes lower in the process. The President did veto the Farm Bill…but Congress made some HUGE mistakes: The bill they sent the prez didn’t contain 34 pages, in fact all of Title III was missing. Pelosi didn’t bother to check to see if what she signed and sent to the prez was even complete. Of coarse DC is located in the state of Confusion. Also the USDA said that the version that was passed by the House and Senate only contains 25% of requested amount to even implement the bill. The Ag portion REDUCED ‘Green box’ payments (those acceptable to WTO like Direct payments), and INCREASED ‘Amber box’ payments (those UN acceptable to WTO like counter cyclical payments). To add to all of this there were numerous ‘earmarks, budget gimmicks etc’ added to the final version. So the White House and USDA gladly sent the whole thing back and USDA rep Scott Stenzel commented; ‘this is the perfect opportunity to fix the bill, remove earmarks and gimmicks’. So the saga continues.

            Ukraine is projecting 45 myn mt production. Argie did indeed suspend the Ag strike, for now at least. Paki is getting serious about imports now, and has eliminated import duties. FAO says the world cereal production is estimated to be up 3% greater than demand this year (first time in last 3 years), and Aussie is hoping for rain, particularly in the east.

            Please see attached UPDATE crop conditions….