Grain markets have been trending upward recently, especially soybeans and spring wheat.

“On January 8, 2020 spring wheat was at $4.98 cash,” said Jeremy Burkhart, multi-commodities and project manager at CHS SunPrairie of Minot, earlier this month. “Today it was 5.47.”

Wheat futures are at their highest prices in nearly six years, spurred somewhat by a growing concern about dry weather over much of the United States and Russia.

“We’ve been buying spring wheat like crazy,” said Burkhart. “It’s dry down south, terrible. We’ll know more once the winter wheat crop breaks dormancy.”

While improved prices for spring wheat is good news for producers, even more good news continues to come out of the soybean market.

“That’s the big one,” remarked Burkhart. “Soybeans a year ago were at 8.24 and the latest this year they were at 12.94. A tight supply runs the market up. We’re trying to ship them to the West Coast before the program ends out there. We use the same bins for soybeans as we do for wheat.”

According to the publication Ag Week, the rally in the grain markets in late 2020 is expected to continue at least thought the early part of this year. Much of the activity has been led by the sale of soybeans to China which hit 1.17 million bushels in late December. Speculation is that dry conditions in Argentina and Brazil will lead to a later soybean crop there, potentially opening the door for additional U.S. sales in February.