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      5/5/08

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

            Inspection report this morning showed weak corn shipments of only 30.7 myn bu (needed to be 48.2). We do have time to make this up since the corn year starts 9/1, but if it continues at this pace the Gov’t would need to revise corn S&D’s down by 250+ myn bu. Based on LAST YEARS yields that equates to 1.8 myn corn acres. Wheat shipments also slipped with just 19.5 myn bu shipped. With 5 weeks left in the wheat year. At this pace some minor ‘tweaking’ may all that is necessary to the wheat S&D’s. On the week we shipped 5.6 DNS, 11.2 HRW, 1.8 SRW and just 117m bu of SWW. Gov’t continues to thrash the Farm Bill. One winner would be CSP, as it stands today funding would increase by about $5 byn ($12 byn total) in the next 10 year…that could cause the CSP program to grow to more than 100 myn acres. Kansas wheat tour starts tomorrow. Last year the tour estimated the Kansas crop at 392.7 myn bu, actual was 283.8 myn bu. But to be fair, at the time of the tour, only the frost/ snow had occurred, the heavy rains did not happen till later…but still it gives you an idea how much a tour est. can vary from actual. COT report was pretty interesting: small specs are now short 25myn bu of Chic. Funds however, even with lower OI are holding 947 myn bu long…25 Index funds are holding a whopping 44% of the paper in Chicago. OI has dropped dramatically in wheats: In Chicago OI is down over 100 myn bu from the highs in early Feb. Mpls and KC are also way off the highs of early Feb. Specs are holding their longs in Corn…for now, but when they leave (corn gets planted, oil drops, $$ strengthens, gov’t messes with RFS/ other political pressure), corn could easily shed a buck or more…FWIW 22 Rep. Senators (including McCain) sent a letter to the EPA asking for RFS ‘waiver’ till food prices drop. Weekly crop progress report is expecting corn plantings to be 20-35%. Which would be good progress, but still well off the 5 ave pace.

            Seeding is starting in earnest in Aussie. It sounds as if they have decent deep moisture to start off with, but some areas are little on the dry side on top. They will need timely rains, and no one seems to be comfortable enough to call the drought “over”. China is working to prevent food smuggling (food leaking out of the country) to try to keep supplies up/ prices down. That is one thing about this years price surge that could really hurt markets is more gov’t controls/ involvement to build a ‘cheap food policy’.

***Didja Know: The top 3 HRW acre states this year: Ks 10.4 myn acres, Tx 6.2 and Okie 5.7 myn.