U.S. ag exports suffer on back of strong dollar

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U.S. ag exports suffer on back of strong dollar

An ag economist says U.S. ag exports might slow to round out the marketing year. The University of Missouri’s Ben Brown says an elevated U.S. dollar is boosting commodity prices for trading partners.

He tells Brownfield for China, Japan and Korea…

“When they bought a lot of corn, it was when our dollar index was down at like 94 or 95,” he said. “That means that our currnecy was relatively weak compared to others. Our goods were cheaper if you’re an exporter and we were able to make some pretty large sales.”

Brown said the dollar holding above most currencies for the last couple of months has already put a lid on export sales.

“Soybeans came in actually negative, signaling that we had more export sales cancelations than we did new sales on the week,” Brown said.

And he said last week’s corn sales were the ‘smallest’ of the marketing year so far. Brown said more sales will likely be cancelled or rolled into the next marketing year which starts September 1st.

Brown made his comments during Brownfield’s recent Weekly Commodity Market Update.

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