2024-10-21 22:08:00
In the United States, the weather in recent weeks has prompted farmers to speed up work in corn fields. This leads to severe pressure on storage infrastructure in the Midwest regions.
Again this year, in 2024, American farmers will harvest historically high volumes of corn. But will they still be happy about it, given the constraints that this abundance of yellow beans entails?
The volumes pose serious logistical problems: last year the harvest was already record high. Many farmers in the Midwest therefore still have 2023 corn in their silos that they refused to sell off.
A harvest that is added to the 2023 stocks
Added to these stocks is the new harvest which is arriving faster than expected, because the weeks of hot and dry weather have followed one another and have made the corn ripen early. In what we call the Corn Belt, farmers had harvested 40% more ears by mid-October than last year.
The frenetic pace of truck rotation causes long queues in some places to unload grains. Due to lack of space, corn is sometimes even stored outdoors, on the ground, according to testimonies gathered by the Reuters news agency.
The upward revision of corn yields made in recent days by the USDA, the American Department of Agriculture, adds volume to what has already been announced.
Reduced prices
This American offer will only reinforce prices which have returned to the low level of four years ago. But farmers who are drowning in their harvest can no longer afford not to sell, and would sometimes even be forced to accept prices below production costs. Knowing that non-standard quantities placed on the market risk causing prices to fall further.
The pressure exerted by this new exceptional corn harvest is all the greater for farmers as it comes after a historic soybean harvest, which has just ended and which also had to take place at an unusual pace, for the same climatic reasons.
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