Corn, Soybean Prices See No Major Price Drops from Bird Flu

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Corn and soybean producers are keeping a close eye on the bird flu outbreak, concerned that the loss of nearly 45 million birds might reduce demand for poultry feed made with the grains and send prices lower.

Todd Hultman, a grain market analyst for DTN, an Omaha, Nebraska-based agriculture market data provider, says there appears to be no significant impact to commodity prices in part because demand remains strong from other sources, such as hog and cattle producers.

The amount of grain fed to chickens and turkeys is relatively small compared to how much is harvested.

About 1 billion bushels each of corn and soybeans went into turkey and chicken feed last year. That's out of 14 billion bushels of corn and nearly 4 billion bushels of soybeans.

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