I learned today a friend of mine has already sold some of his anticipated 2008 wheat crop for $5.50, or about 100 pounds per ton(your 2240 lb tons).  Anybody over there pricing 2008 wheat??

latest briefing from our HGCA: UK wheat £120/t for Nov 08 (delivered) (feed ). Your Kansas wheat $214/t for Dec 08. You convert it to bushels because i still can't grasp the concept as a bushel is a volume and its weight must vary according to moisture and quality . ??

Mark:  A bushel of wheat weighs 60 pounds.  The moisture on wheat needs to be 13.5, anything more is docked.  The test weight must be 60, or it will be docked if below, but of course no premium if higher than that.  A bushel is actually a measure of weight, even though it comes from a volume.  Having seen your system I can now see ours is confusing, as oats are 32, barley 46, soybeans 60, but corn and milo(maize  and grain sorghum to you) are 56, but ear corn is 72.  Add to that the fact that sometimes the ideal moisture changes as well.  I don't know who started our system, but that is the way it is.  In addition, grain sorghum is priced by the hundredweight, our hundredweight is 100 pounds, it confuses me that yours is 112. 

Hiya,

 We are just beginning to price up next years cropping. Normally everything is sold, or at least committed in a pool or similar, once it has emerged. Rape has just begun to show, so most will be sold by September for next year.

 I am being a bit more cautious - with crazy price swings comes risk of taking a beating if we sell a tonnage a a fixed price and cannot produce the yields. When the downside was only a few pounds, selling a hundred ton or so more than you had was not a problem but this year I am glad I only forward sold 75% of my normal product.

I remember a conference saying that American and Canadian farmers made much more use of 'options' when sellign their crop, and I am thinking of taking this route. If it cost me a tenner a ton for th option to sell at £120 a ton, that sounds reasonable sense. Anyone else use these? What is your experience an did you buy them from your merchant or elsewere.

 Tim.

One can also sell options.

For example, early last spring, Jan '08 calls at £120 paid well over £10/tonne.

Regards

bankrupt

 

Any one wish they had not returned there BEET CONTRACT ?

September wheat KCBOT closed at $8.30 yesterday(Sept 10) surely an all time high.  Still puts us in back of the 200 per ton I hear from the UK, but certainly something that is amazing to us, wheat within 70 cents a bushel of soybeans, just unheard of.  Meanwhile, cash corn price at our local elevator, $3.09 today, a far cry from the $5 predicted at planting. Feeder(store) cattle nearby $118 per hundred weight, a good price with grain this high.  The only thing to frown at is the butcher hog market, all things considered it isn't very good. 

Kansas City wheat closed today up the 30 cent limit once again, unbelievable.  Almost surreal to see wheat pushing $9, this is a level not only unheard of but undreamed of.  I don't know of anyone who actually has any wheat to sell, my dad sold the rest of his 2 weeks ago, about $2 less I think, and mine was all sold at harvest(what little there was).  New crop 2008 closed at $6.01, a good price, but at enough of a discount to current cash to make me shy away from pricing any today.