Thursday, April 7, 2011

Naked Capitalism Link of the Day

Today's link: Farmers look to earn their corn with new storage bins, at the Financial Times:
Soaring corn prices have sparked a rush by US farmers to build storage bins across the Midwest, with many hoping to profit from an expected shortage by hanging on to grain supplies.
The rapid pace at which bins are being erected has made the glint of galvanised steel a more common sight in rural parts of the US, their growing presence a sign that farmers expect to fetch higher prices for their corn as the country’s stocks fall to critically low low levels.
“Storage has had an incredible boom,” said Michael Swanson, agricultural economist at Wells Fargo. “Farmers have built more on-farm grain storage in the last three to four years than they’ve built in the previous 30.”
Government economists believe that US corn inventories will fall sharply before combine harvesters start rolling in the autumn, to 675m bushels by August. Corn futures prices have doubled in a year to surpass $7.70 per bushel, breaking records set in the commodity price spike of 2008.

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