Part 1 opened this series by providing some initial background information and a quick overview of federal budget basics. This article continues the budget discussion with a review of revenue and spending data as reported by the Congressional Budget Office.…

USDA’s release of the March Prospective Planting report indicated an increase in planted acreage for corn in 2019. At 92.8 million acres, the report shows approximately 3.7 million additional acres of corn planted to be planted compared to last year.…

Several farmdoc daily articles have documented the exceptional corn and soybean yields occurring in Illinois and the Corn Belt since the 2012 drought. In this article, county soybean yields for Illinois are examined using yield deviations. As described in the…

Corn price held steady last week after the bearish WASDE report projected a 200 million bushel increase in 2018-19 ending stocks. At 2.035 billion bushels, the current ending stocks projection reflects weakening demand for corn that looks to continue through…

The vast majority of domestic demand for ethanol in the U.S. is in the form of E10 gasoline blends. For example, implied domestic consumption of ethanol in 2018 was 14.4 billion gallons, of which all but a few hundred million…

Just over a year ago, on March 1, 2018, President Trump announced that he was using existing authorities to impose tariffs on imports of steel and aluminum (Swanson, March 1, 2018).  This was the first in a series of actions…