Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) You first question comes from Vincent Andrews - Morgan Stanley.
Vincent Andrews - Morgan Stanley
Wondering if you could make some comments about the U.S. corn curve has moved up about $0.60 in the last six weeks alone and I’m just wondering if there’s been any sawing from a demand perspective or anything you are hearing in the channel as a function of those higher corn prices?
Bill Doyle
Vincent, thank you and I will turn that question over to David for an answer.
David Delaney
Vincent, we’re in the midst of the slowest harvest since 1985, as of October 18, 17% of the crop have been harvested versus the five year average of 46%. The crop is only 83% mature and right now certain consultants believe with the freeze that we had earlier this month that are around 215 million bushels have been lost, maybe up to a billion bushels have been affected. So we’ll wait to see how that turns out.
In terms of the corn price, December corn was 304 in early September, $4 yesterday. So the major contribution impacted the farmer as he harvested his crop here this fall. We have seen some interest from the fall application standpoint. We’re having reports from across the board that farmers are coming back and using normal fertility for their fall applications. At random we’ve enough to a late start. We’re going to have a narrow window, so on year-on-year comparison, it’s going to felt us down, but we’re seeing a much better attitude in the field today.
Bill Doyle
Vincent, what I would say is, we never really expected much out of this fall just because of what David said. We get off to such a late planting start. We knew it’s going to be a late harvest and then you had this, while it was an ideal growing season it hasn’t been a great fall for drying down the crop. It’s a highly moisture content crop, which is going to take some cost to either led it dry naturally, because you’re losing a little bit of the yield or you’re going to spend it on gas to drive down that crop, so both of those things have been taken into account.
I just think the window is going to be so short by the time you get it out in course of the psychological cutoff date is U.S. Thanksgiving. We’re just not going to have much of the fall, which is going to put even more pressure on the spring than we’re accustomed to because we just won’t have the usual split between fall and spring application, which combined with some of the other factors as I talked about with our international business looking brighter. We’re just going to see more pressure beginning in early 2010.
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