CBOT March 2020 soybeans with 20-, 50- and 100-day moving averages. (Barchart)

U.S. grains: Wheat, soy hit 2018 highs

Chicago | Reuters — U.S. grain and soybean futures hit 2018 highs to start the new year as traders continued to expect increased Chinese demand once Washington and Beijing ink an initial trade deal. The gains on Thursday extended annual advances from 2019, a year marked by farmer stress over the U.S.-China trade war and



Flea beetles were aggressive feeders in 2019, leading to multiple spray passes for some farmers.

Year in review: Keep an eye out for these critters in 2020

Entomologist John Gavloski says these should be on your radar

Based on what went on in Manitoba fields this past season, producers may want to be on the lookout for several insects in 2020 that could potentially make a reappearance. At the top of the list are flea beetles, cutworms and grasshoppers, according to Manitoba’s provincial entomologist, John Gavloski. Speaking at the recent Manitoba Agronomists



The Chicago Board of Trade building on May 28, 2018. (Harmantasdc/iStock Editorial/Getty Images)

CBOT weekly outlook: Trade bullish into New Year

MarketsFarm — Agriculture commodities on the Chicago Board of Trade were mixed on Friday, the last day of the January contract and one of the last trading days of 2019. Traders were “shoring up positions ahead of the weekend,” with profit-taking a feature, said Terry Reilly of Futures International in Chicago. Soybeans were lower after



A mature wheat crop in southern Saskatchewan, on Sept. 2, 2018.

Year in review: Cereal royalty discussions expected to resume soon

Seed industry had hoped issue would be settled by now

Prairie farmers will be talking about cereal royalties again this year. When public discussions on collecting more royalties from farmers to help fund new cereal varieties started in November 2018 the federal government targeted the spring of 2019 to report on farmer feedback on the seed industry’s two proposed options. But farmer opposition to both



While every year presents its own challenges and opportunities, a number of themes kept reappearing with only slight variations.

Looking back at the decade that was in grain markets

As the ‘teens come to a close, it’s been 10 years of enormous change

The more things change, the more they stay the same.’ There was no shortage of market moving topics to write about over the past decade, from the demise of the Canadian Wheat Board to the rise of tweet-based international diplomacy, but did anything really change? Grain and oilseed prices had their ups and downs, but