The story in the corn market in the coming year is one of huge supply and huge demand, according to agricultural economist and Dresden area farmer Philip Shaw.

He told a BDO agricultural symposium in Chatham recently the more than 15-billion bushels of corn produced in the United States this year has weighed on futures prices and raised questions of whether the low Canadian dollar will continue to mitigate those low prices.

“With the Canadian dollar at 74 cents you’ve got to wonder how much lower it can go, there is a lot of sky above us now and that will be a continuing challenge as we go into 2017,” he says.

Shaw adds that futures are not the only story for Canadian farmers – the way they are for their American counterparts – because of currency fluctuations.

“The level for grain, you know, corn at about $3.40, soybeans are $2 higher than a year ago have kind of bucked the trend,” he says. “It has led to the story in my mind of huge surpluses suppressing the futures values.”

Shaw says marketing grain under those conditions is a continuing challenge.