weather and crop conditions continue to affect corn and soybean prices, but the June 29 release of the USDA's Acreage and Grain Stocks reports will provide additional fundamental information for these markets, said Darrel Good in his weekly outlook. Use in that category is calculated after the estimate of stocks at the end of the quarter is available, and use for the quarter then is projected based on the level of use projected by the USDA for the entire year and a typical seasonal...

But one of the biggest reasons for the jump remains a sharp rise in the cost of feed grain, primarily corn, which is being increasingly used for ethanol. Several factors have affected the price of milk, including rising demand in China and increased exports to European countries, a milk industry spokesman said. The cost of a gallon of milk tends to reflect local cost-of-living prices, which is why Arizonans are paying more, experts said. Arizonans are still paying a premium for milk, even...

Michigan State and the University of Wisconsin at Madison will share in a $125 million federal grant to establish the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, said two officials with knowledge of the grants, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the announcement had not yet been made. Michigan State and the University of Wisconsin at Madison will share in a $125 million federal grant to establish the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, said two officials with knowledge of the...

The market's mood at the present time seems to equate any forecasts for rains as a negative for corn, so any additional precipitation across the Midwest will likely keep corn prices on the defensive over the coming days. For this afternoon, the market seems to be expecting this afternoon's corn crop condition rating to hold steady or to show a slight increase, so any major deviation from that consensus will likely generate a price response. Today's price action seemed to have more to do...

Locavores are responding to the issue of "food miles" - the amount of fossil fuel used to transport food from where it's produced to where it's eaten. The locavore experiment began two years ago with an online forum encouraging people to sign up for one month to consume food and drink grown only within their "foodshed" Going the extra mile - Epicure - Entertainment - theage.com. Also known as the 100-Mile Diet (hence my metric boundary), like most food fads the idea comes from North...

ADM is exploring a variety of strategies to enter Brazil's sugar-cane-ethanol market, ranging from building sugar-cane mills and ethanol plants from the ground up to acquiring sugar-cane companies. Such a move by the grain and ethanol giant would mark an endorsement of a gasoline substitute that competes directly with the corn-based approach used by U. Livestock and poultry producers have been complaining on Capitol Hill about the rising price of corn, which has hurt farmers who rely on...